


My Little Hero Academia

by RHJunior



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2020-05-31 04:03:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19418092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RHJunior/pseuds/RHJunior





	1. Chapter 1

Midoriya was a teenage boy in Musutafu, Japan. He lived in a world of superheroes… and supervillains. In his world over eighty percent of the people on Earth possessed some sort of superpower, a Quirk. A handful of those had the talent, training, skill and power to become Pro Heroes, superheroes licensed to perform brave deeds rescuing citizens from danger and battling the forces of evil. His entire life he had dreamed of being a great Hero.

But Midoriya was one of the diminishing few born without any power at all… He was Quirkless.

His entire future changed one day, though. In a chance encounter with All Might, the greatest hero in Japan, he was found worthy and chosen to be All Might’s successor, and inherit his power-- One for All.

He ran to the beach. He knew today was the day. Today he would finish clearing Dagobah beach, the rigorous physical training would be completed, and All Might would transfer the power of One for All to him. He would take the application test for U.A., the most prestigious hero academy in Japan and All Might’s Alma Mater, and begin the long course to becoming the world’s greatest Hero.

He knew all these things right down to his bones. But the one thing he didn’t know is that, through all his struggles, he had an audience.

“ _Good Morn, sister! Hath the green-haired one finished his trials?”_

“ _Yeah! Has he gotten the mojo thingy yet? I’m on pinions and needles here!” Someone rasped._

_The voice that replied was serene as the dawn. “Good morning, girls. No, not yet; he’s on his way to the beach now… oh, look. he’s arrived and completing the last of the work.” The onlookers paused to watch as the object of their attention began hauling the last of the debris on the beach away._

“ _My word,” a genteel, cultivated voice said. “The boy certainly is--”_

“ _I think the word you’re looking for is ‘ripped.’ Exercise, it does a body good.” This voice bubbled over with good cheer._

“ _Oh dear, how long do they have till the test?” The last was in a timid, anxious whisper._

“ _Couple of hours. Popcorn?”_

“ _Sakes, they’re cuttin’ it close, ain’t they?”_

_Fretful hooves tapped a staccato.“I know! My nerves are so on edge. What if he misses the exam? What if he doesn’t pass? What if--”_

“ _Calm yourself, my favorite student.” The serene voice chuckled. “The young hero we’ve watched has risen to every challenge thus far; I’m sure he will do spectacularly.”_

The last pile of trash was shifted, ready to haul away. As the sun rose, Izuku climbed to the top of the heap and screamed his triumph to the sky.

“ _My word, that was certainly primal.”_

All Might was waiting for him when he came back down. “Congratulations, young Midoriya,” he said. “You’ve done it-- and with just hours to spare. You are ready to be a vessel for One for All.” He plucked a single golden hair off his own head and held it out to the boy. “Eat this.”

“ _Gross. A hair??”_

“ _These little rituals of power have unusual requirements sometimes...”_

Midoriya managed, with some difficulty, to swallow the strand of hair. “Now quickly,” Toshinori urged him. “The exam is in a few hours. You do not want to be late!”

“ _Wait, what? No explanation? No instructions? No tips? Just “Clench your butt and yell” and off he goes to-- When you all lent me your power, I had at least a LITTLE training!”_

“ _Fifteen years as my apprentice, and it’s ‘a little training,’” the serene one murmured in an amused aside._

Midoriya took the written exam with confidence… then he faced the dreaded practical. He and a hundred other powered students were set loose in a faux city, to do battle with an army of killer robots. The testing zone exploded in violence and mayhem all around him.

“ _Oh, I can’t look! This is so brutal!”_

“ _Come on, kid, you haven’t even beaten one yet--!”_

Then there was a mighty rumble, and everything went mad around him.

“ _Great horney toads, whut in the name of Discord, Tirek and Krastos the Gluemaker is THAT??”_

“ _Oh no. That must be the ‘Zero Pointer’ that All Mic described!”_

Students fled in panic as the skyscraper-sized mechanical monster bore down on them. Izuku was looking around frantically for an avenue of escape when he heard the cry for help. A girl was pinned under some of the wreckage. It was the girl from before the test… the Zero Pointer was bearing down on her, grinding everything under its treads.

It was then that Izuku felt the power surge through him. Power, incredible, explosive power pouring through his insides. He did not pause, he did not hesitate. He poured that power into his legs and LEAPED.

“ _YEEHAW! Go get ‘em, boy!” Other cheers rose in agreement._

He soared up, hurtling towards the machine’s gargantuan head. He hauled back with one fist, poured power into it till his skin crackled with light…

“SMAAAAASH!” One punch landed. The leviathan Zero-Pointer flew backwards, exploding at the seams, fire and smoke erupting from every shattered joint. It fell to the ground in a thunder of destruction.

“ _Ho.. lee… horseapples...” the raspy voice said reverently._

“ _Oh no.” The serene voice was no longer serene. “Something is wrong...”_

“ _His limbs, oh no, look at his limbs!” the timid voice cried out in distress._

Izuku cried out in agony. His legs… his arms… the bones had shattered like glass! He plummeted from the sky, his limbs flapping like socks full of broken pottery. He was going to die!

“ _Oh crap, he’s gonna go splat when he hits!”_

“ _I can’t look--”_

Mere feet from the ground, something struck his face a stinging blow…. And his fall halted. The timing had been incredible; she had hit him with her zero gravity quirk with inches to spare. “R-release,” she groaned, undoing her power and letting him fall to the pavement before turning to retch.

“ _Oh-- HUZZAH for the round-faced maiden!” There was a sound of fervently applauding hooves. “BULLY for her! I have found mine favorite amongst this crowd for sure, Sister!”_

“ _He ain’t outta the woods yet--”_

“ _He’s a shoo-in for that school for sure!”_

“ _But the rules state that the Zero Pointer is-- zero points! He hasn’t got a single point yet!”_

Izuku pushed himself up on one arm, desperately tried to crawl forward. He could see a few two and one pointers a block away. Tears gushed down his face. “Please,” he begged. “Just one point--!”

_The ones watching wept in pity as they watched the boy struggling to crawl on broken limbs. “This is horrible,” the meek one wept. “Won’t one of them do something--?”_

The horn sounded. “ **The practical exam is finished,”** shouted All Mic over the intercom. Overwhelmed by pain and despair, Izuku collapsed and darkness overtook him.

“ _That SUCKS!”_

“ _He failed?? That’s terrible!”_

“ _It’s worse than that,” the eldest voice said, her serenity gone. “He’s dying!” She was right. The damage to the young man’s body was too great; the pain and shock were starting to shut down his heart._ _And the school’s miracle healer was preoccupied with several injured students elsewhere. She would arrive too late._

“ _No!”_

“ _What do we do?”_

“ _What we intended before we learned he was to receive One for All,” the eldest said, voice firm. “He cannot survive his injuries-- but an ALICORN could!”_

“ _Are you sure??” the studious voice said._

“ _It’s his only chance. Now, everyone, NOW!”_

Some of the applicants had begun to approach the shattered boy lying on the street when a pillar of light, blazing white as sunlight and moonlight and limned with a thousand colors, fell from the sky and engulfed him. There was a sound like someone striking a power chord across the strings of the cosmos and an explosion of rainbow-white light, flinging everyone backwards.

Ururaka sat up from where she’d been tossed, groaning at her new bruises. She blinked the spots out of her eyes. “What happened?” she murmured. Cautiously she got to her feet and approached where the green-haired boy had fallen.

There was no boy there anymore. Instead what lay there was a tiny mint-green pony with freckles and a tousled mane.

“ _Sister?”_

“ _...Yes?”_

“ _That was the transformation and ascension spell, was it not?”_

“… _Yyyyeeessss...”_

“ _Twas more than sufficient to immediately transform yon hero into an alicorn, yes, and save his life?”_

“ _With all of us contributing? Oh yes.”_

“ _Then while it did mend him and save his life--- why there lies a green EARTH PONY?”_

_A hoof tapped, uncertainly. “I… haven’t the foggiest...”_


	2. Chapter 2

Inko stared at her son. Her son stared back at her with large, soulful eyes. He was scared, embarrassed, bewildered, confused and maybe feeling a little guilty… which sounds like a lot to take in at a glance, but Midoriya Inko was his mother, and her son’s heart had always been an open book to everyone, not just her. Besides, the way his ears laid back and his little pony tail twitched were just dead giveaways.

Izuku was a pony. A little green pony. A little pastel green pony with a dark messy green mane and tail. He was ridiculously adorable, too, with a large head, smallish body, cute little hooves the same color as his coat, and huge green soulful eyes. He still had his freckles as well. He was wearing the scruffy remains of his track suit and looking decidedly confused.

“I don’t understand this,” she said in confusion, gesturing to the little green pony who was sitting on one of Recovery Girl’s hospital gurneys, twiddling his hooves. “How could-- how could this ‘One for All,’” she said, looking around carefully and lowering her voice, “how could it turn my son into THIS?”

“We have no idea,” Toshinori Yagi (All Might’s scrawny, lanky “mortal” form) said. He leaned forward in his chair, his arms resting on his bony knees. After the initial panic, All Might and Izuku had come to the conclusion that keeping any secrets from Izuku’s mother was pretty much a futile concept, and had decided to reveal everything to her-- All Might’s secret, One for All, the whole mess. All said, after the shock and disbelief (and a bit of horrified shrieking about his tackling the Zero Pointer on his own), she had handled the situation and all its strangeness fairly well.

After all this was the age of Quirks. The average person probably saw stranger things than this in the cafeteria lunch line.

“We think possibly… maybe… One for All interacted with a latent Quirk in some fashion?” He held his hands up and shrugged. “Triggered it in some way? All Quirks are mysteries, but One for All has mysteries about it all its own.”

“ _Of course!”_

“ _What? What is it, my student?”_

“ _We forgot about the nature of One for All! It’s not just an inheritable power matrix, it’s an **amalgamation** that grows more powerful as it’s passed down.But you can’t have two independent matrixes in one individual-- it’d be unstable. Toshinori may not have had a Quirk, but eighty percent of the population does, so statistically at least six of the previous inheritors had a Quirk of their own. One for All would have had to combine with any other Quirks present-- merge with them, making a more powerful whole!”_

“ _Yes, of course! But what does that mean for Izuku?”_

“ _That’s the thing...Alicornification is an amalgamation too. It’s a combination of all the tribes of Equestria. I’ll have to do the math, figure out the algorithm, but… I think One for All **disassembled** the spell, and put it back together… differently, as parts of itself.”_

“ _In what way?”_

“ _I don’t know for sure until I do the numbers-- but I have an idea. I can’t wait to see if it’s true.” There was a sound of clapping hooves and giggling._

“How is he, though?” Inko said anxiously. “Is he healthy?”

“Oh, quite,” Recovery Girl said, smiling. “Healthy as a horse, in fact.”

Izuku’s eyebrows tabled. “Really?” he said, deadpan. “You really had to go there?”

“There is one question I would ask you though, Midoriya-san.” Recovery Girl said. “Has your son ever gotten any tattoos?”

“ _Tattoos?”_ The exclamation came from everyone in the room. “Certainly not!” Inko said, while Izuku chipped in with “No way!”

“Well I did notice one thing while I was examining him,” Recovery Girl said. “Young man… er… young pony?… pull down your sweatpants just a bit please. Just over your hip.”

“What? B-but...” Recovery Girl just gave him a look. Blushing fiercely he used a forehoof to push the waistband of his pants down, exposing his hip. There on his hip in dark green was the kanji for HERO.

Izuku craned his head backward to look. “That wasn’t there before, I swear!” He checked his other hip, it was there as well.

“How… strangely apropos,” Toshinori said.

“Words appearing on someone? That’s a normal Quirk?” Inko asked.

“We have a student with a word bubble for a head, you tell me, Ma’am,” Toshinori said in amusement.

Izuku hiked his sweatpants back up. “I hope we can find some clothes that fit a pony,” he mumbled. “This is awkward.”

“Actually, the Support classes could re-tailor some clothes for you at cost,” Toshinori said. “They have to design costumes and gear for all sorts of mutation Quirks after all.”

“Oh, how nice,” Inko said. “That’s one problem solved at least...” she frowned. “But what about his diet…?”

“An ordinary one should be fine,” Recovery Girl said. “Maybe a few more leafy greens-- but everyone could use that, if you ask me.”

“Ah.” There was a moment’s pause. Inko looked at her son and started to giggle.

“What?” Izuku said. He looked at his mother askance.

“Did I ever tell you I wanted a pony as a little girl?” Inko giggled. Impulsively she leaned forward and cuddled her son.

“Mom!”

“I can’t help it. You really are adorable looking...”

“Ugh...” Izuku rolled his eyes, blushing.

Toshinori smothered a chuckle. “I am compelled to wonder if he still has One for All...”

Izuku frowned thoughtfully. “I do,” he said. “I’m sure of it. Ever since that punch I can feel it, sort of crackling away down inside me.” He held up a forehoof and looked at it. “But-- I’m sort of scared to call it up now. Who knows what it’ll do to me next?”

Toshinori frowned and plucked at his chin. “It is a problem. There is much my own predecessor never got to tell me about it. Much of One for All’s history is a mystery. But she did tell me that it… _wants_ to work with its bearer. Strives to. It just takes time to adjust to each new person who wields it. It’s learning to work with you, as much as you are learning to work with it.”

“So… trust it, try to understand what it wants?” Izuku said.

Toshinori nodded. “I had little problem, but it was always fairly straightforward with me.” He shook his head. “That does bring up another issue. Your admission.”

Izuku’s head snapped up. “My admission? B-but I didn’t...”

Toshinori held up a hand, smiling. “I think considering the circumstances, I can tell you in advance,” he said. “You did get in.” The Midoriya’s faces lit up and Inko hugged her son in delight. “While you didn’t make any villain points, there was a second, secret scoring system-- rescue points. You earned sixty of them when you rescued miss Uraraka from the Zero Pointer, which actually put you in second place. Congratulations.”

_Somewhere in another corner of the cosmos, a gathering of ponies whooped and applauded._

Inko nearly squeezed the stuffings out of her son as they celebrated. “Ah, however,” Toshinori said, “there is one thing. Due to circumstances, the administration is asking that you be subjected to a second practical test--”

“What!” Inko said, letting go of her son and standing up. “After all he went through, you’re going to put him through that AGAIN--”

“Please, let me explain!” Toshinori said, motioning for her to calm down. Inko sat down, her face thunderous. Izuku hardly looked any happier. “Most of us are of the opinion that young Midoriya has more than proved himself. But there are concerns. He has after all undergone a _massive_ physical transformation. There are several on staff who insisted that he be re-evaluated to determine how much his abilities have changed.”

Inko fumed but relented, her shoulders heaving. “That’s… only fair,” she said in frustration. “I’m sorry, Izuku, but he’s right.” She looked at Toshinori. “But how can you in good conscience make him face that Zero Pointer again--!”

“It will be a simplified, scaled-down test,” All Might reassured her. “We’re not about to pit one little pony-- er, student-- against a training zone full of battle-bots!” Both the Midoriyas calmed a little bit at this. “If you’ll bring Izuku back next Saturday, we’ll conduct the practical and get it out of the way. Is that good?” Both nodded. “Good. We’ll see you then.”

* * *

“Please proceed to the red cross in the center of the room,” Aizawa’s voice droned over the loudspeakers. Cautiously, his head on a swivel, Izuku walked into the enormous aircraft hangar. The vast, brightly lit space was scattered with makeshift obstacles; concrete barricades, block walls, pillars… His hooves clicked loudly on the concrete floor. What did they use this building for normally, he wondered? Storing the Zero Pointers between tests, maybe?

When he arrived at the red cross, Eraserhead spoke again. “This evaluation is a scaled-down version of the Application Practical,” he said. “You will be pitted against three one pointers, two two-pointers, and one three-pointer. You will have fifteen minutes. If you defeat them all in that time you will pass. If you do not… then you fail.”

Izuku looked up at the ceiling. “What?? I have to beat ALL of them?? And I was told I already passed-- that this was a re-evaluation! That’s not fair!”

“Life isn’t fair,” Eraserhead droned. Izuku seethed. He swore he could hear a note of smugness in the Underground Hero’s tired voice. “By the way, the test has started.” Izuku heard the ominous whine of servo motors and bleeping sensors closing in. “Duck.”

Izuku yelped and hit the dirt. He just barely dodged the sweeping leg of a two-pointer, jumped over another and hit the floor galloping as fast as he could go, robots coming from every direction.

Up in the observation room, All Might was glaring at an impassive Eraserhead. “You made a liar out of me, Aizawa,” he growled. “Why did you push Nedzu-sama into changing this to pass-or-fail?”

“This is an academy for training superheroes, not a school for the handicapped,” Aizawa said without taking his eyes off the viewing window. “He’s basically lost his hands, his bipedal locomotion, his-- well, everything. If he can’t keep up with fully abled students he doesn’t belong here.”

“Well you’re certainly not doing your teacher-student relationship any favors, faithful listener,” Present Mic (who was busy running the hangar’s computers) said. “Little rocker’s gonna have a chip on his shoulder about you the size of a double-platinum record!”

“You will note how I’m shaking in my boots,” Aizawa said in a bored monotone.

“And I’m sure this has nothing to do with your phobia of horses,” All Might snorted, disgruntled.

“Shut up.”

Down on the floor Izuku evaded the robots for a moment and took cover behind a waist-high wall (for him, higher than his head). He called up One for All, began pouring it into his hooves--

 _No, that’s not right._ He stopped. It was like his pony body was _shouting_ that this was the wrong approach. His mind clicked over like a swiss watch on fast forward. Why? He flexed his muscles in his legs and shoulders… muscles. Joints, muscles, tendons… THAT was his mistake! When he’d thrown that Zero-pointer killing punch, he’d put One for All into his arm-- but you didn’t just punch with your arm, you punched with your shoulder, your back, your waist, your leg-- the whole body, in fact.

No wonder his legs had broken and his arm had shattered. It was a miracle he hadn’t ripped them completely off! The power needed to be spread out _through his whole body,_ so it could all work together.

He began calling up One for All throughout his form, letting it fill him evenly… feet-- ah, hooves-- legs, shoulders, hips, back, chest abdomen, neck, even his head… _no not all of it!_ Again he listened to his body, keeping it to a fraction, holding it back like turning down a spigot to a trickle-- just enough, just to the verge but no more--

Bolts of green lightning writhing over and under his skin, he leaped over the wall and attacked.

“Your prodigy better do something soon,” Aizawa said idly. Time’s half up...” He stopped in mid sentence, his mouth hanging open, as a high-pitched whinny and a horrendous smash resounded from below. A one-pointer folded double around two tiny hoofprints flew past the observation window.

“Oh, our contestant is up and at ‘em now, listeners!” Present Mic crowed. “Yeeah! There went a one-pointer!” There was another smash. “And another!” Lasers crackled and mini missiles howled. “The bots are returning fire, he’s taking cover-- nooo, he’s kicking the concrete barricade through the air at-- ouch, that’ll leave a mark-- crushed a two pointer like--”

“Holy, he’s on the three-pointer’s back, he’s twisting off--” there was a squeal and a crunch and a dismembered robot’s head came up and bounced off the observation window. “And now he-- OHHH this is brutal! It’s robot gotterdammerung, people! And now he’s using what’s left of one two pointer to beat the other--” there was an explosion.

“The last one pointer is, yes, it appears to be fleeing for it’s life...” All three onlookers heard a squealing tire and a robotic voice going _“nope nope nope nope--”_ followed by furious galloping hooves and a painful smash. Present Mic threw his hands in the air and made a victory sign. “And the final score is: Tiny little green pony TEN, U.A. robots NOTHING, YEEAAAAAAHHH!” He spun in his office chair.

All Might snorted. Aizawa glared at the DJ Hero sourly. He hit the klaxon, then the button on the intercom. “The test is over,” he said. “Are you uninjured, Midoriya?”

Down on the floor, Izuku was standing atop the badly-stomped remains of a One Pointer, breathing heavily. He glared up at the window. “SO,” he said a little sarcastically, his teeth bared. _“How’d I do, teach?”_

Toshinori leaned over to Aizawa. “Good luck on that ‘hearts and minds’ thing,’ he said, his cheerful smile full of schadenfreude. “By the way, did I ever tell you that when I was out in the American Midwest, I saw a horse kick a man that made him mad so hard it ruptured him?” He made a motion with his hands like two globes bursting. “Like two plums under a meat mallet...”

“I hate you,” Aizawa muttered.

* * *

The first day of U.A. arrived. Izuku was ready. He straightened his tie as best he could with his hoof, set his shoulders and pushed open the door to class 1-A.

“ _Sir, get your feet down off that desk! It is disrespectful to this institution--”_

“ _Bite me, trust fund boy!”_

Inwardly Izuku groaned. He recognized both voices. Kacchan AND that Tenya kid? In the same class? Izuku’s luck was truly terrible. Of course so was everyone else’s; those two would get along like gasoline and a burning book of matches… “hello, excuse me, is this heroing course 1-A?” he said.

Everyone turned to look. Instantly several female voices squealed in glee.

“Oh my gosh he’s so CUTE!”

“Eeee!”

“How aDORable!”

Alarmed, Izuku backed up a step. In a heartbeat he was surrounded by classmates, most staring over each other’s shoulders in curiosity or, in the case of the females, cooing and squealing about how “cute” he was. “Oh I’m glad you made it, Izuku-chan!” Uraraka was saying, hopping up and down on her toes and smiling. Izuku blushed like a rose and grinned sheepishly. Or perhaps ponishly.

“ _Awww, I see a budding romance--”_

“ _Hush, Cadence, we’ll miss something.”_

To his surprise, Tenya was bowing to him. “Tenya Iida,” he introduced himself. “And allow me to issue an apology for my temerity at the examinations. You saw that the test was more than we all thought; you are clearly the superior student.”

“I--” Izuku stammered. Noone had ever apologized to him or congratulated him on being a superior student before!

“This is a new student??” Someone said in disbelief.

“Indeed,” Tenya said again. “He in fact had the highest score in the practical exams.”

“They had me do a re-evaluation.” Izuku said, chuckling nervously. “They added my score from that to the practical--”

“Still, Izuku-chan, you should be proud of that,” Uraraka insisted.

“What??” a voice from the back burst out. People suddenly started getting pushed aside as Kacchan forced his way forward. “That NOBODY Deku scored higher than ME? I don’t believe it for a--” he got through the crowd and glared down at Izuku… and froze, his jaw hanging open.

“Uhhh, hi Kacchan,” Izuku said apprehensively.

Kacchan stared.

“Kacchan?”

Kacchan stared some more.

The tableau seemed frozen. “Kacchan, you’re making me nervous--” Izuku said, backing up a step--

“WHAT IS THIS??” The scream made everyone in the class jump backward. “What--” Izuku began.

“WHAT THE HORSEY HELL IS THIS??” Kacchan pushed his way through the crowd and stood staring at a wall.

A bedraggled looking man with a sleeping bag under his arm came in through the door. He seemed to make a point of giving the green pony in the middle of the room a wide berth. “What is all this irrational noise--”

“I CAN’T DEAL WITH THIS!” Kacchan screamed, staggering out into the hall.

Aizawa looked around the room with bleary eyes and a cocked eyebrow. “….Anyone care to explain?” he asked. “...Or, at least try?”

Izuku stuck his head out the door and looked for Kacchan. The blonde boy was standing down the hall, banging his forehead gently against the wall.

“WHAT IS MY LIFE???” Kacchan screamed.

Izuku slowly, carefully pulled the door shut. “Umm, Kacchan will be joining us later I think,” he said weakly. There was a final “aaaaagh!” from outside before the door clicked shut, sealing the room in silence.

There was a long silence as the class stared at the teacher, and the teacher stared at the class. “Well, take your seats,” Aizawa said.

There was a general scramble as everyone rushed to their desks.


	3. Chapter 3

Aizawa sat in front of Principal Nedzu’s desk. Or, well, more sprawled over it. He was cradling his head in both hands and looked, to use the vernacular, like warmed over crap. He really does look like Russell Brand with a terminal hangover, Nedzu thought as he stirred sugar into his cup. If only he would drink more tea, he’d feel better…

Midnight, on the other hand, looked like she was having a ball. She was sitting next to the surly Underground Hero and clearly struggling not to laugh. “Well,” Nedzu said, taking a sip (chamomile, how delightful), “Another incident involving our odd little pony student.”

“It was not an incident,” Aizawa growled. Midnight sputtered.

“To be fair practically anything this particular pupil does is going to be novel enough to qualify as an incident,” Nedzu said. “But before we discuss it, I do have one question.” He slid a computer printout across the desk to the two teachers. There in full color was a photograph of Eraserhead. He was halfway up a poplar tree and out on a bough, hanging upside down. Right below him was a little green point with a grumpy look on his face and a ball in his mouth.

His smile never changed but Nedzu’s eyes glittered with wicked glee. “I really DO need to know the story behind this picture.”

Midnight fell out of her chair cackling like a halloween witch.

* * *

(earlier...)

  
“Is he KIDDING??” Izuku yelped.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to kick somebody hard enough to leave hoofprints on their grandchildren. Again? They were threatening to expel him AGAIN? To judge by the reactions of the other students around him, he wasn’t the only one in a state of disbelief.

“I’m gonna talk to him,” he said suddenly. “This has gotta be a mistake. Or-- or something.” He put on a stiff upper lip and trotted off to confront Aizawa-sensei.

Aizawa had ambled off to stand in the shade under a nearby tree. He turned around to lean his back against the trunk-- and nearly shat himself. The horse mutant student, Midoriya, was galloping straight at him with murderous hate on his little pony face.

Now it has to be restated, Aizawa had a deeply rooted phobia of horses (an unfortunate childhood experience involving a family trip to an American ‘Dude Ranch.’) To his eyes Izuku’s firm look and trotting gait looked like a bloodthirsty stampede. Being who he was, he triggered his Quirk; his eyes glowed red, his hair rose up around his head--

AND THE LITTLE HORSE DIDN’T STOP.

\--So, being who he was, he made an expedient withdrawal to a safe point where he could continue his observation. And anyone claiming he actually scrambled up the tree behind him like a terrified monkey with a tiger on his ass was a liar, dammit, a LIAR. “WHAT--” he coughed and cleared his throat, lowering his voice a few octaves. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“That’s what I wanna know, Sensei,” Izuku said. “Are you seriously going to expel one of us? On the first day??”

“That’s what I said,” Aizawa said, trying to maintain his cool. Ponies couldn’t climb trees could they? How high could they jump?

“I don’t believe this!” Izuku shouted tearfully. “You want me-- US-- to run ANOTHER stupid gauntlet just to ‘prove how worthy we are’ to just BE here!” He turned and kicked the tree with his back hooves. He obviously didn’t know his own strength; the tree vibrated like a tuning fork, nearly dislodging the hapless Underground Hero from his perch. As it was he ended up hanging upside down from the bough he’d been crouching on. “Do you think if I go to another school they might actually teach me one lesson before they try to throw me out??”

“All right, all right, ALLRIGHT!” Aizawa shouted. A little more calmly, he said, “I wasn’t going to actually expel anyone. It was only a ruse to get you all to show your best effort--”

“A RUSE?” Izuku’s childlike voice cracked from yelling so loud. “How about next time you just say ‘give me your best effort?’ I cleaned Dagobah Beach singlehanded! I punched out a Zero Pointer! I don’t need to be TRICKED into ‘giving my best effort!’” He actually started crying.

Aizawa heard muttering and looked up (or down, it was hard to tell when one was hanging like a tree sloth.) The little discussion had lured over the other students, who were standing in a semicircle listening to the proceedings. The girls in particular were giving him glares like-- like--

* * *

  
“Like they wanted to take a blunt knife and peel your dick like a banana?” Midnight said with an evil leer.

Aizawa shuddered. “Please refrain from ever using that vivid and disturbingly accurate description ever again.”

* * *

(earlier...)

  
One of the girls gave Izuku a tissue. “Thanks,” he mumbled. “I feel like such a wuss..”

“It’s okay,” Tsuyu said, crouching down and giving Izuku a pat. “You’re a good kid. Or pony.”

Aizawa was losing his patience, and his grip. “Look, just go stand in the circle and throw the ball, all right?” he said. He pulled out a softball with a digital meter on its side and let it drop. It thunked to the ground.

Izuku stared. He walked over, sat down and stared at Aizawa for a minute. Then he picked up the ball… In the only way he could: in his mouth. He sat there for several seconds to let the image sink in with the teacher.

“You weally ahre an affhole,” he said around the ball in his mouth.

* * *

  
“And that’s when someone snapped the picture with their cellphone,” Aizawa grumbled. “And uploaded it to the internet.” He steadfastly ignored the cackling coworker lying on the floor.

“I suppose I will have to speak with Toshinori-san,” Nedzu said blithely. “That was rather unprofessional of him.”

Aizawa’s bloodshot eyes bugged out. “What??”

“Oh yes, he was watching from just behind the trees as you tested his successor,” Nedzu said. “He saw the moment and just couldn’t resist.” He refilled his cup as Midnight’s cackles turned to shrieks of laughter and Aizawa’s grumbles turned into a steady almost subsonic growl.

* * *

_Elsewhere in the cosmos, a roomful of mares laughed their sparkly plots off._

* * *

“Moving on,” Nedzu urged.

“Yes,” Aizawa almost snarled. “Moving on.” He aimed a halfhearted kick at his colleague. “We went ahead with the apprehension test, and of course the moment the pony boy stepped up things went strange--” he paused. “What are you doing here anyway, Midnight?”

“Me? I just came for the tea,” she giggled. “I’m staying for the gossip! This is too rich!”

* * *

(earlier...)  
Izuku had gone from angry, to tearful, to apathetic and now he was winding back around to angry again. His emotions really were all over the place, a small part of him reflected. Was this normal for ponies?

The rest of him was too busy thinking “screw this teacher and his tests and his ‘ruses’” too hard to care. He stomped over to the circle for the ball-pitching test. He couldn’t throw the damn thing in his mouth-- he had no hands! Screw it, he’d KICK the thing. Kick it as hard as he could. He started calling up One for All, cranking it up hotter and hotter… He knew how dangerous it might be to go for 100% but he didn’t CARE anymore. He was going to buck this stupid ball to the freaking MOON. Let’s see Mister ‘You aren’t WORTHY’ turn his nose up at THAT---

The power of his Quirk surged through him. He could feel his mane and tail standing on end. He flipped the ball up into the air and behind him, intending to kick it with his back leg as hard as he could--

There was a massive wrench that shot through his entire body. He let out a yell in spite of himself--

* * *

  
“And when the flash of light cleared, he was lying there in the grass... Except now he had a horn on his head.”

* * *

(earlier...)

“I have a what?” Instinctively his hoof rose to brush his forehead, only to find an obstruction there. He crossed his eyes, trying to look at it.  
“A horn!” Ashido squealed. “You’re a UNICORN!”

“Eee, now you’re TWICE as precious!” Hagakure said. The invisible girl hopped up and down in place.

* * *

_(“Ah resent that,” said a disgruntled farmpony. The others shushed her.)_

* * *

“Here, look.” Ochako held up her cellphone. She’d set the camera to work like a mirror. Izuku stared; there he was, a little mint green pony with a little spiral horn on his head. Oh good grief, now what?

“It looks like you have a Transformation Quirk, after all,” Tokoyami said. “Fascinating.”

Several female hands were drifting over to pet his mane and stroke his ears-- making for a very flustered Izuku. “Uh...”

“Yeah, but-- what does it have to do with the price of tea in China?” Mineta said, scratching his chin and looking puzzled. The other students looked at him. “What I mean is,” he said patiently, rolling his eyes. Didn’t anyone get old euphemisms anymore? “What does growing a horn have do do with his Quirk? Why would he WANT to grow a horn?” He looked at the crowd of girls cooing and trying to get a pet in on the little green unicorn. He smirked and started to say something else.

Iida karate-chopped him on top of the head in between his hairballs. “OW! Okay, double entendre averted, geez...”

“I don’t know,” Izuku said in response. He picked up the softball. “I just wanted to throw this stupid ball as far as I possibly could-- Yeep!” He wasn’t the only one to let out a yelp of surprise. He hadn’t picked the ball up with his hoof, or with his mouth. It was now hovering in front of his face, tethered to his glowing horn by a strand of shimmering green light.

“MAGIC!” Ashido said, pointing excitedly. “Unicorns are MAGIC, of course!!”

* * *

  
“Telekinesis,” Aizawa said. “Apparently this new, second form is far less physically strong, but instead has an incredibly powerful telekinetic field, evidenced by a glowing emination of emerald green light--”

Nedzu’s desk phone rang. He picked it up. “Yes?” He listened and sighed. “For the last time, your company does not own the word “superhero,” the idea of heroes in capes, nor, regardless of how many substandard comic stories you publish, does it own any color of the visible light spectrum, not even GREEN. Bite me, you DC monkey.” He slammed the phone down and sighed. “Greedy American corporations… you were saying?”

“Ahem. For lack of any better options, I proceeded with the testing,” Aizawa said. “Understandably, the students were all far more excited to see the results of this ‘new Quirk’ than they were even to see their own. He passed the ball throw with ease...”

* * *

(earlier...)  
Izuku closed his eyes and concentrated. The ball began orbiting him, faster and faster, till it was little more than a glowing green ring around him. With a grunt he released the power. The tether to the ball snapped and it disappeared in a streak of green light, soon becoming nothing more than an emerald twinkle in the sky.

“Wow,” Izuku murmured.

* * *

  
“I made him take some of the tests twice, once using muscle power, once using his Quirk… just to confirm my suspicions. I was right. Physically he was much weaker than his other form, had less stamina, et cetera. But his ‘unicorn power--’ he made quote marks in the air at this-- ‘was nearly as strong.

“He crushed the grip test… literally...”

* * *

(earlier...)

Izuku stood in front of the grip machine, grinning sheepishly. The machine was now a smoking ruin; the handles had been crushed together to the width of a pencil. “oops...”

* * *

  
“And the fifty meter dash was-- inconclusive.”

“Inconclusive?”

“He teleported.”

A fine spray of expensive tea settled over the teak wood desktop.

* * *

(earlier...)

Izuku stood there at the finish line, staggering slightly, his mane smoking and singed. “It’s okay! I know where I am. I know where I am--”

* * *

  
“And the long jump… well, he cleared the sandbox, but… by levitating. And he had a bit of difficulty getting back down.”

* * *

(earlier...)  
Izuku floated overhead, slowly tumbling in the breeze. He was surrounded with a glowing green aura. Several of the students were below him, trying to jump up and pull him back down. He flailed his hooves frantically. “Someone get me off this crazy ride!” he yelped.

* * *

  
“The rest of the tests continued in the same vein. By and large he did well, save for some complications with his Quirk noone had foreseen. He ended up placing in the top five.”

“Not bad for someone who essentially had his powers for five whole minutes beforehand,” Nedzu mused.

Aizawa grunted. “I saw him use that green light to demonstrate telekinesis, teleportation, levitation, to generate walls of force… at one point I saw him create a pair of giant boxing gloves-- we need a new punching machine by the way--”

“In short he traded in raw brute strength and stamina for versatility,” Midnight observed. Aizawa nodded.

“I notice you’re not mentioning the reactions of his… childhood rival,” Nedzu said delicately. Aizawa sighed.

“He returned from Recovery Girl after she prescribed him some tranquilizers. Apparently they weren’t enough. He took one look at the board, saw Izuku smash the punching machine like a beer can, said something along the lines of “Of course he has magic powers now” and started frothing at the mouth. I had to have the robots haul him back to Recovery Girl on a stretcher.”

“That boy has issues,” Midnight said, tsk’ing.

“That boy has a lifetime subscription,” Aizawa said.

“Young Midoriya is going to be an interesting student to educate,” Nedzu said. “Call it a hunch, but I suspect that these two forms are only the beginning.” He paused. “Allow me to submit the observation that the last two times he transformed, it was during a moment of extreme physical or emotional distress-- when he was driven to unleash his power at its full potential.”

“And when he did,” Midnight said, fingertip to her chin, “he immediately transformed into something that could cope with the crisis at hand. The first time, into a form tough and strong enough to tolerate the stress his body was under. The second time, into a form with enough “dexterity” to perform tests that were impossible for someone with hooves instead of hands...”

“Well spotted,” Nedzu clapped his paws. “So our objective is threefold-- to help young Midoriya figure out how to change his forms at will, learn how to use the powers and abilities of each-- and avoid such ‘crisis situations’ that might trigger his transformation into a form before he’s ready for it.”

“A tall order,” Aizawa said.

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be as competent at it as any other teachers could be,” Nedzu said, sipping his tea with an air of confidence.

* * *

_Celestia snorted.”Go teach your grandmama how to suck eggs, mouse,” she muttered._

_“Celestiaaa...”_

_“… perhaps it’s time we intervened. Just a little. Luna?”_

_“At last…” the night princess sighed. “Come Twilight, twill be us who speak to him first..”_

_“What? But--”_

_“Who else to instruct him in his powers as a unicorn than thyself?” A flash of a midnight horn and an opening formed in the dream realm._

_“But but but-- I don’t have a lesson plan! Or… anything!” there was the sound of nervously cantering hooves. “ How will I be able to teach him the fundamentals in so short a time--”_

_“Twilight. Dear student. Just keep it simple.” Celestia’s voice was as calming as ever. “Just teach him the single most important lesson you learned. The first one I taught you, remember? Ice?”_

_“Oh of course! Ice! Thank you Celestia!”_

_“Go on dear… I’m afraid you won’t have much time there. Dreams in that realm are rather… transient...”_

* * *

Izuku groaned as he crawled into bed. What a day! Aizawa clearly had it in for him, and he had no idea why. Running every test TWICE? “That guy has issues,” he grumbled.

Arriving home with a new horn growing out of his head-- and his schoolbooks floating along behind him in the grip of his new, strange power-- didn’t exactly result in a peaceful evening. His mother had freaked out… again… and had almost dragged him to the hospital… again… before he persuaded her that Recovery Girl had given him a clean bill of health and that the experts (his teachers, whom he suspected at least half of being clinically insane) had said that it was just a new manifestation of his Quirk’s abilities. She’d calmed down a bit… but she was clearly jittery. He was pretty sure one more freaky surprise and she was going to lose it, big time…

He grumbled and pulled the blankets up to his chin. “Just let it go, Izuku,” he said. “You made it through another stupid ‘test of character.’ You’re a student in U.A. You’re All Might’s chosen successor-- you’re going to be a great hero someday! Just let it all go...”

He sighed and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

_He was sitting in a classroom made of soft, cloudlike shapes. He seemed to be the only one there, front row, center desk. Across the blackboard was written a single word in English, in huge block letters: ICE. The teacher turned from the board. “We don’t have much time, Izuku, so we’d better get started quickly.”_

_She set the chalk down. She was wearing horn rimmed glasses and had her hair in a messy half-undone bun. She was wearing a shirt that tied off at her midriff , a plaid miniskirt that barely covered her hips, and dark stockings that left an absolutely alarming amount of Zettai ryōiki uncovered._

_She was not, however, a girl. She was a purple unicorn filly-- one with wings(??)-- in a schoolgirl outfit._

_She gave him a look through her horn rimmed glasses. “I have so much to teach you about what it means to be a unicorn stallion...”_

_“OH MY G---”_

_Izuku’s panicked scream nearly upended the dreamscape. It certainly brought Luna running. She manifested in the classroom and found Twilight crouched defensively behind the desk, while Izuku cowered at the other end of the classroom. “Ye little fishes and green apples, what is this--” then she took a second look at Twilight’s getup and started to laugh. “Methinks thou movest ahead a few lessons too many, Twilight!”_

_“What do you...GAAAH!” Twilight looked down at herself and realized what she was wearing. She dove under the desk and began ripping the salacious outfit off. “What the BUCK is going on??”_

_Luna’s gales of laughter finally dwindled to giggles. “Twould seem yon lad had another sort of dream entirely planned for this eventide,” she said gleefully. “Thou didst not maintain strong enough control and separation, Twilight.”_

_Twilight stuck her head out from under the desk. “I wouldn’t talk, sister,” she said a bit snappishly. “Get a load of yourself!”_

_Luna looked down at herself. “Wah!” Twilight was right. She was now wearing a duplicate of the outfit Twilight Sparkle had been sporting; on her taller frame it was even more alarmingly undersized. “Hm,” she said in amusement, waggling her hips. “I believe I could ‘work’ this look, as Rarity might say...”_

_“Oh GODS this is so WRONG!” Izuku screamed, traumatized. He curled up under a student desk in the back of the classroom with his hooves over his eyes._

_“Calm thyself, young Midoriya,” Luna said as she dispelled the outfit on herself._

_“Yeah. The outfits are gone now, everything’s okay,” Twilight said, stepping from behind the teacher’s desk._

_Izuku peeked, then rehid his face. “How is this better? Now you’re both NAKED!” he paused in horrified realization. “OH GODS, WHERE ARE MY PANTS?? It would be one of those ‘at school without your pants’ dreams too! I am so messed up--”_

_“Oh calm down, nothing’s showing,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes._

_Izuku opened his eyes and looked down. “And that’s supposed to make me CALMER??” he said in a rapidly rising falsetto. Luna nearly choked to death laughing._

_“Oh for crying out loud--”_

_“I’m being punished aren’t I,” Izuku whimpered tearfully. “This is all because I let all the girls in class keep petting my mane and ears--”_

_Luna pondered. “Aye, that would do it,” she said._

_“Izuku. IZUKU!” Twilight finally got the panicking colt’s attention. “Izuku, it’s okay. Really. Nothing… weird… is going to happen.” She rolled her eyes again. “We’re sorry we trespassed on you in mid-dream like this, but we’re here for a very important reason.”_

_“Important reason?” Izuku said, his voice faint._

_“Strewth. We are here to teach thee about thy new form, and thy powers,” Luna said._

_“You’re going to teach me about One for All?” he asked, clearly confused._

_Luna sighed. “What little we may,” she said. “But I spoke more of thy… Equestrian attributes.” She paused and cleared her throat. “In an attempt to aide thee in an a time of peril, we may have… added something to the mix, as it were.”_

_“You have a new form,” Twilight said. “Or as you may have guessed-- several new forms. Unicorn and Earth pony are just two...”_

_“Earth pony?”_

_“Thy first form, the one of most puissant strength,” Luna said._

_“Each form has different abilities, attributes-- Ones vastly increased in power by One for All. Here in the dreamscape we will be teaching you about them,” Twilight said. “I of course will be teaching you about the unicorns,” she said a little proudly._

_Izuku’s brow furrowed. “Why ‘obviously?’”_

_“Oh. Ahem. I… used to be one. Before these.” She fluttered her wings briefly. “Not that obvious… if you didn’t know me before… ahem. Right. Anyway--” the colors of the dream-classroom shifted oddly. “Oh dear.”_

_“What’s wrong?” Izuku asked._

_“You’re coming close to waking up,” Twilight said. “We’d better make this quick.” She trotted up to the chalkboard and levitated a pointer. “This is the first thing all unicorns have to learn about their magic. Focus on it hard, try to remember it when you wake up, okay?” the pointer rapped on the board. ICE. I...C… E… or Intent, Concentration, Execution. Intent: decide what you want your magic to do. Concentration: focus your mind entirely on what you intend. Execution: release your power to cause what you want to happen….”_

* * *

  
The alarm rang. Izuku stared blearily up at the ceiling. “My life is so freaking weird now,” he muttered.


	4. Chapter 4

Izuku couldn’t help pronking a bit as they waited to file onto the bus. He’d been looking forward to the field trip to the USJ all week. Uraraka couldn’t help noticing him hopping from hoof to hoof and giggled at him. “You’re certainly excited, Izuku-chan,” she said affectionately. “Looking forward to Rescue training?”

Izuku nodded, beaming. “This is really a chance to make my mark,” he said. “As potent as these unicorn powers are for combat, the applications for rescue work are just-- endless. I’ve got half a notebook filled with ideas just how to use the levitation alone...”

“Could I look at that?” Uraraka said, her curiosity piqued. “I know my gravity power isn’t quite the same, but it’s close enough that there might be ideas I could use.”

“Oh, sure!” It had taken some doing, but the support class had managed to cut a hero uniform for Izuku’s rather… unique… build. The green boilersuit was largely the same, but some features simply had to go-- the rabbit-ear hood was deemed too “fiddly” for Izuku’s lack of manual dexterity. Gloves and boots of course had been tossed in favor of sturdy yet flexible hoofshoes that extended up over his cannons. The “Smile” mouth guard likewise had been altered: it had been morphed into an armored collar and peytral…. And his utility belt had been replaced with two sturdy saddlebags. With a flick of his horn he extracted the appropriate notebook and floated it to Uraraka--

Just as Bakugo brusquely shouldered his way between them with a half-snarl. Uraraka fumbled and nearly dropped the notebook, clutching it to her chest. She huffed at the explosive boy’s back.

“Bakugo! Show respect to your fellow students and board in an orderly manner!” Iida barked.

Normally everyone would have expected something like “Get bent, Wind-Up Boy!” from the foul-tempered boy. Instead what they got was a wild, red-eyed glare and a guttural, feral growl that almost made the bus windows rattle. Everyone took a step back, even Iida. After holding his death growl for several ominous seconds, Bakugo swung himself up into the bus.

“And here’s hoping that a little exercise in the USJ helps him mellow out,” Mineta muttered.

“He’s really not been himself since the combat trials...” Midoriya said, scuffing a hoof and looking nervous and guilty.

* * *

_It was Midoriya and Uraraka, Team Hero, vs. Iida and Bakugo, Team Villain. And it had taken mere seconds for things to go off the rails. The moment they had secured the bomb, “Team Villain” had fallen apart, with Iida forced to stand guard over the mission-critical paper-mache WMD as Bakugo had gone tearing off through the building, roaring for Izuku to “come out and face him like a man.”_

_Team Hero had heard him coming floors away, of course. “Oh man, he’s going ballistic!” Izuku had whimpered as something had exploded._

“ _So what do we do? What’s the plan?” Uraraka said frantically. She wouldn’t say it, but her family’s construction and demolition company had taught her a healthy respect for the destructive power of explosive charges. The ones Bakugo was setting off every other taunt were making her bones shake._

_Izuku looked around, up the stairwell, down the hall, out the window. “Okay, we gotta split up. He’s coming for me--”_

“ _DEKUUUU!”_

“ _\--self evidently,” Uraraka said in alarm._

“ _I’ll keep him busy, while you go after the bomb.”_

“ _But--”_

“ _I’ll be okay, my forcefield will protect me--” another BOOM echoed down the stairwell. “I hope,” he finished feebly._

“ _But how do I get past Iida?”_

_In spite of things, Izuku grinned. “Easy,” he said. He opened his saddlebag and levitated her-- a ball of fishing line?_

_*_

_Bakugo stormed through the pseudo office space, kicking aside chairs and dividers and blasting what wouldn’t be kicked. “WHERE ARE YOU DEKU? QUIT HIDING AND FACE ME!”_

“ _I’m right here, Kacchan!”_

_Bakugo wheeled around. There in the exit behind him stood the single biggest pain in his ass, Deku the Unicorn. The little fourlegged green glue pot was standing there hooves akimbo and doing an utterly shit job of looking intimidating. “Well? Come on, let’s do this!” He pawed the floor with a hoof._

_Bakugo grinned like it Christmas and Shark Week all at once. “About time,” he chortled, his eyes burning. He primed up his gauntlets. “I’m finally going to give you the asswhupping you’ve been begging for, Deku--” He took a menacing step towards the worthless little pony._

… _and jerked to a halt. As Izuku watched, an absolutely extraordinary series of expressions contorted the schoolyard bully’s face. For a moment he thought Bakugo was having a stroke. “Kacchan?” he asked warily._

_Kacchan was not having a stroke. He was having an epiphany. He had been building up this moment in his head for so long-- the moment that he finally beat Deku into the ground and brushed him off his coattails once and for all--- that he’d never realized something that was now staring him in the face with huge, babyish green eyes._

_HE COULDN’T WIN._

_This wasn’t a fight between Katsuki the Hero and Deku, the ghost from his past. This was a fight between Katsuki Bakugo, the Explosion King…. And a cute, tiny, adorable, cuddly-wuddly unicorn pony that barely came up to his knee._

_It didn’t matter that cute li’l pony could buck through a concrete wall, or levitate a bus. If Bakugo lost, he’d look terrible. But if Bakugo WON, he’d look WORSE!_

_He dropped to his knees, bloodshot eyes wild, hands clawing the air. “Hate… you… so… much...” he whispered._

_Izuku peeked from around the force field wall he’d thrown up. “…What?”_

“ _ **HAAAAAATE YOOOOOOOOOUUUU”**_

_They didn’t even need microphones to hear him in the observation room. Half the class nearly jumped out of its skin. All Might gave a yell of anguish and fell backwards out of his chair, clutching his earphones. The subsequent explosion, when Bakugo in atavistic fury fired BOTH his gauntlets into the ceiling, turned the remaining floors into an atrium and the building roof into an open-air skylight, missing Iida and the Bomb by mere meters._

_In all the chaos, Iida never saw Uraraka capture the bomb. A 100 lb fishing line with a bit of rebar tied to the end made for a terrible grappling line-- unless you were a girl who could turn herself weightless. Uraraka had used the fishing line to scale up the outside of the building and jumped through the window onto the Bomb when Iida’s back had been turned._

* * *

“I didn’t think the primal screaming was ever going to end,” Kaminari said soberly.

“He’s getting better. At least his eye has stopped twitching now, anyway.” Mineta added.

“Everyone, please proceed onto the bus and take your places according to the seating chart--” Iida was saying. Izuku couldn’t help rolling his eyes as he climbed aboard. Iida was a great choice for class representative… but he really took the job a little too seriously.

“We can’t, Iida-san,” someone told him. “The seats aren’t arranged like on your chart--”

“What??” Iida cried in dismay. “But all my planning-- this is utter disorganization--”

“Oh for crying out loud SIT DOWN,” Jiro said. She grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked the startled boy down into a seat. “Your shouting is making my ears hurt.”

“A good leader needs to be ready to adapt their plans when circumstances change, not just devoutly cling to them,” Yaoyorozu advised him. Iida actually looked like he was about to whine, but he stifled it and stayed seated.

Izuku couldn’t help but notice that Uraraka seemed excited and fidgety. She was sitting with her hands clasped and an eager smile on her face. “Looking forward to this, Uraraka-chan?” he said.

She nodded eagerly. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Especially with meeting THIRTEEN, the rescue hero!” She got the starstruck look in her eyes anyone else would have recognized in Izuku’s eyes whenever All Might came up. “They’ve saved thousands of lives, in all sorts of dire catastrophes. The USJ is actually Thirteen’s own project, designed and built by Thirteen to teach search and rescue and other skills to countless future generations of heroes….”

It was about a five minute ride (good GRIEF was UA campus big!) to the USJ. When they arrived, there was no denying that all of them were impressed. It was a staggeringly huge domed building, one that would dwarf most olympic stadiums. Waiting to greet them at the front entrance was a figure dressed in an outfit very similar to an old NASA space suit. “Greetings, and welcome to the Unforeseen Simulation Joint!” they said, waving one heavy-gloved hand. “I am Rescue Hero Thirteen, and I’ll be walking you through the facility...”

Aizawa stepped up. “Where is All Might? He was supposed to be here as well.”

Thirteen scratched the back of his helmet in seeming embarrassment. “Ah, All Might was… delayed on the way to work today,” he said. “He’ll be joining us later, though.” He subtly flashed Aizawa a couple of quick hand signs; Aizawa looked annoyed but nodded.

“Well, we shall proceed as planned. No point in losing time for the tardy,” Aizawa said. “If you will lead the way, Thirteen?”

Izuku however had seen the hand gestures, and recognized them as the hero sign language teams used in the field. _Used up time. Resting._ Izuku bit back a groan. Toshinori-sempai had used up his time limit before he’d even gotten to school??

The oddly-garbed hero led them inside. As Thirteen chattered on about their passion project, Izuku took the chance to look around. The facility was truly enormous. Just from the entryway Izuku could see at least six different zones, some open-air, some domed over. It was a quite nice facility too, with topiary and greenery here and there-- one could almost mistake it for an amusement park tourist attraction. There was even a fountain in the central plaza, though it was hard to see with that odd purple smoke and light show over it-- wait, what?

And why was his horn tingling?

“Now there are one or two things I should tell you before we proceed. Er, three things--”

“Sensei--” Izuku said. The tingling was growing, and so was the glowing cloud.

“Four, actually. No, five--”

“Sensei--!” And now it was tingling and buzzing like mad.

“Actually--”

“THIRTEEN-SENSEI!” Izuku bellowed, making Thirteen jump. He had a surprisingly loud voice for such a little pony. When he had Thirteen’s attention he pointed with a hoof. “Sensei, something bad--” he shook his head wildly as his horn flared. The core of the cloud floating in the central plaza flared, expanding till it covered the entire plaza… and a figure stepped out. They were gaunt, with tangled, grey hair, and wore a black bodysuit that hung loosely on their stoop-shouldered frame. What was truly unsettling about them was that instead of a mask or visor they wore what looked like a severed hand over their face. Other disembodied hands grasped them at their arms, wrists, shoulders, neck… It was the creepiest, most gruesome disguise Izuku had ever seen, and something told him it didn’t belong to a Hero.

Another figure stepped out of the swirling darkness. Then two. Then three more. Then a dozen…. “Is this another test?” Kirishima said. He and a couple of the others started to step forward, fists up and ready.

“Get back!” Aizawa barked, startling them. “Stay together. This is not a test or drill.”

“These are REAL VILLAINS?” Mineta squawked. Ice raced up every spine at those words.

“Sensei, how did they get past the security perimeter?” Uraraka said to Thirteen. Thirteen was frantically tapping on the keypad on the back of their glove.

“I don’t know-- I can’t get a connection to anything! They must have a team member with a Quirk that lets them jam radio signals!” Thirteen said. Immediately everyone went for their cell phone, their suit radio, or even (in the case of Kaminari) tried to use their Quirk to contact someone. It was confirmed; they were cut off.

Aizawa pulled his goggles down over his bloodshot eyes. “Thirteen-- evacuate the children. I’ll do what I can to occupy the villains here.”

Izuku gawked at him. “But sensei-- your fighting style as Eraserhead is sneak attacks and fast captures. You’re going head on, against dozens--”

“You don’t get to be a Pro Hero with just one trick,” Eraserhead said over his shoulder. “Now move!” The students started trotting for the entrance. Izuku then got his first look at what a Pro Hero was really capable of. Aizawa gathered the loops of his capture scarf in each hand and leapt down the long stairway to the plaza. He landed among the throng at the foot of the steps, taking them utterly by surprise, and began lashing out in every direction, snaring three Quirk-nulled thugs in loops of his scarf and slamming them together before spinning to kick a fourth and a fifth in the head.

Izuku couldn’t help staring in shock as his homeroom teacher proceeded to throw around murderous villains like ragdolls. Another shout from Thirteen had him reluctantly turning his back and galloping after the others.

_There was no way Eraserhead could hold out for long--_

They didn’t make it to the exit. A cloud of indigo and black swept around the fleeing students and formed a barricade between them and the doors. Glowing, slitted eyes appeared in the fog and glared down at them as a humanoid body formed out of the smoke.

“Allow us to introduce ourselves,” the indigo fog said. “We are the League of Villains, and we are here to kill All Might.”

The students gasped. Several dropped into fighting stances. The fog-man looked singularly unimpressed, barely even looking up from pretending to buff its ‘fingernails’. “On a more personal note, I am Kurogiri, and it is my pleasure to dispose of you spawnlings--”

He never finished his sentence. The moment he said ‘dispose of you spawnlings’ several things happened at once. Firstly, Thirteen raised a hand and flipped open one of the silver caps on their finger, preparing to activate Black Hole. Secondly, Kirishima and Bakugo, both grinning like Christmas morning had come, leaped at the villain, fists raised and Quirks at full blast. Thirdly, Izuku frantically threw up a bubble dome forcefield over himself and the rest of the class.

With a THWACK that made everyone, even the Villain wince, Kirishima and Bakugo smacked face first into the glowing green bubble and slid slowly down to the floor. “Deku, you retard….” Bakugo groaned.

Izuku cringed. “Sorry Kacchan--!”

“Kids, get back--!” Thirteen shouted. But before they could comply or Izuku could drop his shield, the dome he’d erected filled with indigo smoke. The teleporter had opened gates right through his shield!

“No point in all that, Thirteen,” Kurogiri said. “You’re already overwhelmed.” The clouds began sucking up the students, vanishing them into their depths. Izuku felt his hooves lift off the floor; he yelped and galloped on thin air, trying to regain his footing, only to feel himself whisked off into the dark like the others. He tumbled through a smoky void, hooves flailing and horn flaring.

The darkness began to part in front of him. He was plummeting down, toward the shimmering surface of a lake---

“Oh craaaap!”

\--- and he could already see what looked like shark fins slicing the water below.

“OhCRAP OhCRAP OhCRAP Oh--” _sploosh._ He supposed it was because he hit the water horn-first, but he sank like a stone. The air rushed out of his lungs in a whoosh of bubbles. He saw dark shapes swimming around him, then a mouth full of jagged teeth rushing towards him--

Ever since the day of the combat trials, Izuku’s nightly dream-lessons had continued. The alien princesses had done their best to acquaint him in advance with his potential new forms and their strange and wondrous abilities. They were no longer strange or frightening to him; he’d spent dream-filled nights soaring through cloud-flecked skies on feathery pinions, walking strange forests or delving deep in the stones with strong equine back and hooves, bending time and space and reality with the light from his horn… or splitting the waves of endless unfathomable seas.

He’d never changed to this form before. But the Princesses had SWORN that he could call it up at will, if he needed to. _OhpleaseworkOHpleaseWORK_ \-- he summoned up One for All and let it surge.

* * *

“ _Come on, young colt, thou canst do this-- remember thy lessons--”_

“ _Luna! Stop chewing your hooves--”_

“ _I can’t help it!”_

* * *

On the surface, Tsuyu had just saved Mineta from a watery doom and dragged them both up on the sinking ship. Mineta knelt on the deck next to her, coughing and spluttering. “wh-where are we?” he managed to choke out.

“Flood Zone,” Tsuyu croaked. She could see the water slide off at the far end of the artificial lake (she REALLY had to ask Thirteen about that.) “Did you see who else fell through with us, kero?” The two started looking frantically around.

The smoky portal hadn’t closed; it was still floating over the zone like a malevolent alien stormcloud. Out of the corner of his eye Mineta saw something small, green and pony-shaped fall whinnying into the lake-- right in the middle of the mass of villains surrounding them. “Izuku!” he yelped, pointing. Half the villains immediately dove in pursuit of what looked like a fresh victim. “He doesn’t stand a chance!” Mineta wailed.

Before Tsu could reply, something deep in the lake erupted. A mass of foam half the size of the boat rose up from where their friend had gone down.

“Holy crap, what’s going on down there?” Mineta yelped.

* * *

The power exploded out of him, turning the ocean all around him into white foam. The roiling bubbles parted, revealing a sharklike mouth filled with serrated teeth--

With a flick of his tail, Izuku jetted out from between the deadly jaws and away. He wasted no time, flipping his flukes frantically and streaking for open water, away and down, down as fast and as deep as he could go. He easily outstripped the aquatic villains--- they had been adapted for the water by their Quirks; he was now in a form BORN of it. Soon the light turned dim and twilit. Good grief, he wondered, how deep had Thirteen made this? He couldn’t even see the bottom yet!

The moment he had some breathing space between him and the villains pursuing him, he did a quick self inventory. Pony head, no horn in this form, forehooves the same, green mane that turned into some sort of dorsal fin halfway down his back, back leg and tail gone, replaced with a dolphin-like tail… he was a hippocampus-- a seapony! “Yes!” he cheered, feeling the gills just behind his jawline flex. “It worked! Just like Princess Luna said--”

_there it is-- definitive proof-- the princesses were real holy carp_

“And unfortunately for YOU,” he said, glaring at the villains swimming down after him in hot pursuit, “she taught me a few tricks with this form!”

The green and gold sparks of One for All flowed under his skin. Just as the Princess had showed him, he opened his mouth, tensed his diaphragm, opened his mouth,… and blew a bubble ring at them.

* * *

Over half the villains in the lake had dived after the lone student at this point. Undisciplined of them, Tsuyu thought to herself, abandoning two high-and-dry prisoners to go chasing after a third, all of them expecting somebody else to stay behind and guard them. This lot were anything but professionals.

“What is that?” Mineta said in mystification, pointing at the water.

Tsu squinted, peering into the depths; thanks to Thirteen’s meticulous maintenance and filtration setups, the water was clear as finest crystal. She could see something, a circle? No-- a shiny, bubbling ring, a rather huge one, rising from the depths. She croaked in alarm when she realized what it was. She wrapped one arm and leg around the rail, sticking fast with her finger and toetips, and dragged Mineta close in a death grip. “Hold on!” she ribbited.

One of the many things that oceanographers had discovered in the recent past was that ceteceans, particularly dolphins, could blow bubble rings. They would play with the shimmering rings… but they could also use them to trap prey. The rings were in fact pretty powerful toroidal vortexes, and any small creature caught in their path would be sucked into the swirling water of the ring.

Made by a seapony, and backed by the power of One for All, took it to the next level. The hapless Villains swam for it but the rising expanding ring caught them all; in an instant they went from predators of the deep to guppies in a washing machine. It breached the surface beside the ship, a mass of roiling water dozens of meters across filled with tumbling villains.

Mineta may have had his many flaws and faults, but being slow wasn’t one of them. “It’s gotta be Izuku doing that!”

“But how?” Tsu said, perplexed. Not a even a blue whale could produce a bubble ring that powerful.

“Unicorn magic, who cares? Woohoo, go Izuku!” Mineta shouted. He began throwing his stickyballs into the boiling washing machine next to them hand over hand as fast as he could. The balls were sucked into the mix and began sticking villains to one another; soon they were a single floating mass of flailing, tangled limbs and swearing.

“Hahaah! Take that! That’ll teach you to cross the mighty Grape---” Mineta swallowed his boast with a sickly gulp. Not all the villains had been caught in the trap. A handful were loose and paddling for their boat; just ahead of the pack something swift and sleek was racing towards the boat, just under the waves. “Ah no, here it comes, AAAAGH!” Mineta wailed, covering his head.

There was a splash, and Midoriya shot up out of the waves, landing on the deck between them. He slid on his belly a few feet before coming to a spinning halt. “Asui! Mineta! Are there any others here in this zone?” he shouted.

His classmates didn’t answer for a second, gawking at him. From the front he looked mostly like his

‘baseline pony’ form, from the middle on back he had turned into some sort of porpoise! “What are you??” they both said in confusion.

“Seapony,” Izuku said curtly, his voice distracted and anxious. “In this form I have hydrokinesis, among other things--”

He was interrupted by a roar and a jet of water that slashed across the boat, slicing it nearly in half and making it begin sinking faster. The three hero trainees scrabbled for a foothold on the rapidly tilting deck as the few remaining villains began clawing their way up the sides of the sinking ship. An enormous villain that Izuku mind could only describe as looking like an octopus glued atop a lobster leapt up out of the water and landed with a splintery crash on the wooden deck in front of them.

The Villain lunged with his oversize lobster-claws, but before he could touch any of them he was caught in his scaly gut by a foot-wide jet of water. He flipped over the rail and splashed into the water below, knocking out two other villains scaling the ship’s hull along the way. The jet of water swept back and forth across the deck, knocking a few more villains on their rear ends and some clear back into the water.

Midoriya closed his mouth, cutting the flow of water off. “Come on, we gotta go--”

“Dude, how many powers do you have??” Mineta said.

“Not enough,” Midoriya said fervently, looking around at the lake full of angry, struggling villains. “Asui--”

“Call me TSU!”

“-- Tsu, can you leap out past to the clear water?” He pointed with a hoof to the open waves beyond the tumult. “And carrying me and Mineta?”

Tsu nodded. Her Quirk gave her the proportionate abilities of just about any species of frog, but especially the leaping power. Her tongue lashed out, looping around her two diminutive classmates, and she leapt for the open water. They hit the water with an enormous splash. Tsu took off like a shot, intending to tow her two classmates to safety. Before she could swim a single stroke a bubble of air formed around her head and another around Mineta’s-- Air?? she could, in fact, breathe a bit under water… but she still took a grateful gulp. She could see and hear Mineta gasping in relief as well.

“Hold on!” Izuku said, putting a hoof on their elbows. Something began pushing them from behind. Tsu realized what was happening and retracted her tongue, releasing her classmates. Soon they were zooming through the water, pushed by an invisible current. Izuku swam between them, his flukes going hell for leather.

“I have to agree with Mineta,” Tsu said, staring at him. “How many powers can you possibly have??”

Izuku continued powering forward, not looking at either of them. His expression was grim. “Like I said, not enough. In this form I can do all sorts of tricks with water-- so long as I’m IN the water, or near it. But once we get on dry land I’m going to be nearly useless.”

“And there’s a lot of dry land between the edge of the Flood Zone and the exit,” he continued unhappily.

“Can’t you change again?” Mineta suggested. “Into something more, uh, landworthy?”

“I dunno, I’ve never managed it more than once in a row,” Izuku said. “Usually it’s been days or WEEKS between changes...”

“Not good,” Mineta muttered.

“At least whoever these villains are, they’re certainly not very well organized,” Tsu noted. “They’re more like a loose mob than than a team.”

“You’re right,” Izuku said, his pony brow furrowing. “Still, they got in and sabotaged the security systems, that would take some sophistication--”

Mineta snorted (an odd sound underwater.) “Hardly. It’s more likely they just got lucky.” Izuku shot him a querying look. “One of them probably has a Quirk that just messes with electronics,” Mineta explained. “With as many villains as I saw, I’d be surprised if they didn’t have one or more. Heck, I can’t believe they got that many _water-themed_ villains in one place.” Izuku nodded. It was easy to forget the class perv was also one of the highest scoring in their class, academically. He was creepy but he wasn’t stupid.

“And if they were smarter or better informed, they certainly wouldn’t have dropped someone like Tsu in a WATER zone,” Izuku agreed.

“So they’re dumb, disinformed and disorganized,” Tsu summarized. “Too bad there are so many of them, kero.”

“At least it’s something,” Izuku said. “It means our classmates are probably faring better than we thought...”

* * *

Kirishima tumbled out of the black void and back into the real world. He managed to activate his hardening Quirk a split second before he hit the broken concrete below. He sighed with relief; his Hardening made landing on concrete rubble no more painful than landing on chunks of styrofoam.

“CRAPNUGGETS!!!”

Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for the second person through the portal. Kirishima grimaced and forced his Quirk to deactivate, in order to give whoever was plummeting in a less deadly landing surface. Whoever they were landed full-length on top of him, mashing him into the gravel and jabbing him painfully in several places with knees and elbows.

“Awwwwgh….” Kirishima shoved his unwelcome guest off his back. The figure rolled over, swearing, and glared at him. It was Bakugou. “Awwh crap, it’s you,” he snarled.

“Feeling’s mutual,” Kirishima quipped, standing up and hardening. At least it was somebody with some serious firepower who’d come through with him; Kirishima had the feeling they were about to need it.

“Where the #$% are we anyway?” Bakugou said. The two teens looked around; they were standing in the middle of what looked like a destroyed city street. Crumbled buildings and piles of rubble were everywhere and huge cracks crisscrossed the pavement.

“Looks like the Earthquake zone,” Kirishima said. He tensed up, raising his fists. “And it looks like we got company.”

He was right. Out of the rubble came a half-dozen or so thugs, dressed in makeshift villain costumes and anything but friendly expressions on their faces. At least it was a safe assumption they were villains, Kirishima thought. There were few heroes that opted to accessorize with chains, spikes and leather to this degree. Between the setting and their taste in costumes they looked like the backlot of a Mad Max movie. “Hello little boys,” a villain with chainsaws for hands taunted. “Wanna come out and PLAY?”

Kirishima felt adrenaline flood his veins. He looked over at Bakugou with (he hoped) a bold-looking grin and started to say something appropriately manly.

Bakugou was _smiling._

He wasn’t just smiling; he was staring into the sky, every cord and muscle in his neck standing out, his reddened eyes pinpricks and his mouth stretched into a maniacal grin so wide it bared every glistening tooth in his head. If Bakugou had been of a mind to, he could have told Kirishima he wasn’t happy-- oh no, he wasn’t happy, he was in a state of psychotic euphoria. He was finally, at long last, in a place he’d only dreamed of being; in a debris-strewn battlefield surrounded by enemies and not a citizen or authority figure in sight. No bystanders. No possible collateral damage. _And no freaking cute little ponies to get in his way._

He stared up into heaven-- or at least the dome of the USJ. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“AAIAIAIGGHHAAHAAIARRRGGHH!!!”

The villain who’d been taunting them nearly swallowed his tongue. He’d expected the kids they’d sent to kill to bluster, to threaten, to plead, to cry in fear. What he hadn’t expected was for one of them to let loose a psychotic scream of fury that would make Stain wet his pants and _charge._

Bakugou leapt down off the pile of rubble he was standing on, hands boiling with his Quirk, and fell on the Villains like an American bomber on a Vietnamese rice paddy. The world was filled with earsplitting screams, ragdolling human bodies, and fiery explosions that would have made Micheal Bay weep tears of joy.

* * *

Tokoyami stood in the street, his cloak whipping in the wind as rain sheeted on the pavement around him. The sky, what he could see of it between the towering buildings, was dead black, filled with rolling thunderclouds; every now and then lightning would stutter across the sky, casting the raven-headed boy in stark silhouette.

_Dang,_ he thought. _I bet I look really cool_ _like_ _this, too. Makes me wish I had a camera._

Under other circumstances he would have shamelessly indulged himself by wallowing in the film noir of the situation, but he had more urgent concerns. Villains had attacked the UA… and his class! And scattered them by teleportation in every direction.

When he’d landed in the storm-lashed street, he’d thought for a moment that the teleporter had flung him halfway across Asia, to someplace in the middle of monsoon season. A moment’s thought had negated that; the villain’s biggest advantage was in their shutting down of the security systems in the USJ dome-- they wouldn’t scatter any students outside that dead zone, lest they raise the alarm.

Therefore he was still inside the USJ; the Storm/Monsoon zone, presumably. That was one good thing. Another good thing was that, despite the torrential downpour, the Zone was still brightly lit-- the street and building lights kept everything illuminated.

The streetlights flickered.

...For now, he amended mentally.

The artificial clouds darkened and the rain increased. Tokoyami sought shelter in the lee of the nearest building. There was an overhang there; it wasn’t much shelter but it was better than standing out in the street. He ducked under it, getting out of the worst of the wind and rain. To his surprise someone was already there; Kouji Koda, the craggy-faced animal whisperer. “Have you seen any of the others?” Tokoyami shouted. The other boy shook his head.

“Then we are at a disadvantage,” Tokoyami said grimly. The street lights flickered and dimmed. “I should warn you, my comrade. While Dark Shadow grows more powerful in darkness… he also grows more uncontrollable. And it seems this artificial monsoon is waxing, not waning.” There was a shower of sparks as one of the distant power poles shorted out; a cross street went dark. “I am uncertain about using him in this place.”

“Music to our ears, bird boy,” someone growled over the storm. Figures loomed out of the alleyways, clad in makeshift gear and wielding crude weapons of every sort. They jeered and hefted their tools and charged the two young heroes. There were at least a half-dozen of them, and there looked to be more still lurking in the alleyways.

“Koji, avert your eyes!” Tokoyami said. He whipped open his cloak, revealing two crisscrossing utility belts around his skinny waist. He snatched something off the first one and flung it overhead, looking away at the last second himself. There was a whirr and a bang and the street was briefly lit like it was under the torch of an arc welder.

When Tokoyami opened his eyes, the villains were staggering in the street, screaming and cursing and clutching their eyes. “I said we were at a disadvantage, not that we were helpless,” he said scornfully. “Koji! Summon your friends, summon all you can!” The other boy crouched by a storm drain and began making the chittering and squeaking noises others heard when he was using his Quirk. Tokoyami pulled another handful of items off his second belt.

‘...While I even the playing field as much as I can,’ he thought.

Tokoyami would die before he would admit it, but ever since he was a child, even before Dark Shadow came in, he had been an avid fan of a fictional hero from the Pre-Quirk era. Tokoyami had seen himself as a laughingstock: a ridiculous, a dorky scrawny boy with an equally dorky, bulgy-eyed bird’s head stuck on his neck. But this hero had been everything Tokoyami dreamed of being: Dark, suave, cunning, edgy, a hero to make women swoon and villains tremble…a Dark Knight.

It was no accident that he had modeled his own heroic costume and gear after that pulp-comic hero’s style and look. He still had the first black voluminous cape and utility belt his mother had made him when he was five… and he had practiced religiously every day since his fifth birthday with the tiny bat shaped boomerangs his father had made to go with them.

The boomerangs he had now were simple black wedges, devoid of any trademark-infringing decoration-- but they were made of sterner stuff than balsa wood and were carrying much more interesting payloads than a few holiday bang-snaps.

The villains closed in-- then stopped. Even they could not miss the fact that the chittering and squeaking Koji was filling the air with had suddenly gotten… louder. Or that the raingutters in the sidewalk curbs all around them were filling with hundreds of tiny, glittering eyes.

“Holy-- where did all the rats come from??”

“Man, is UA infested or something??”

_There’s just too many of them. I’ll have to risk losing control of Dark Shadow,_ Tokoyami thought. _I’ll just have to hope my control has improved…or that he’s feeling unusually cooperative today._

_Besides, if this works right it’s going to look so cool._

He turned to look up the street and flicked his wrist. Flick, flick, flick. Then turned the other way, his wrist flicking again. Flick, flick, flick. Six mini-’rangs went whirring off into the rainy dark, straight to their targets. One by one the streetlights popped in a shower of sparks; the ‘rangs exploding and flooding the street with inky smoke.

Already Tokoyami could feel Dark Shadow’s power swelling. He released the Quirk from inside him, letting it rise up behind him, mantling like some great shadowy bird of prey. Over the years the Quirk analysts had many theories about what exactly Dark Shadow was-- theories ranged from a simple ‘imaginary friend’ to a manifestation of Tokoyami’s unconscious mind. Whatever he was, one thing he was capable of being for certain was _terrifying._

“ _ **Welcome,”** _Tokoyami said in his very best Batman voice, _**“TO MY MAD BANQUET OF DARKNESS!”**_

Rats boiled up out of the sewers. Dark Shadow lunged. Villains screamed.

* * *

The city burned. Three villains trotted through the streets, heads on a swivel as they scouted for the students they were trying to kill.

Their hunt might have gone farther if they had been better trained, but like far too many bad guys they failed to look up. They only became aware of the threat hanging over their heads when he dropped his tail-hold on the streetlight and fell down among them. An explosion of kicks, punches and a judo-throw with his powerful tail, and Ojiro had downed all three in less time than it took to say it.

He moved among them, binding their wrists with zip-ties from his utility belt, checking to make sure their injuries weren’t too serious, and propped them back to back around the foot of the street lamp.

He coughed as the smoke grew thicker. The simulator was probably cycling up for another inferno. He needed to get out of there and back to the others before he succumbed to the smoke and heat---

“Hey, kid! C’mere!”

\---but it looked like he was going to have to fight every step of the way out.

* * *

Not all of the students were scattered from the entrance. The smoky teleporter’s efforts had been interrupted midstride by Thirteen, who had opened up a gauntlet and was using their Quirk, Black Hole, to suck the teleporting villain’s smoky form away. The few students remaining-- Iida, Mina, Ochako, Sato-- stood back, frozen in indecision as the two space warpers battled it out.

“Tenya-san!” Thirteen shouted over his shoulder to Iida. “Run for the Gate! Get outside the blackout zone and call for help!”

Iida froze. “I-- I can’t abandon you all, it would be dishonorable--!”

“Tenya!” Thirteen shouted. His back was beginning to bow from the strain. “Remember what I said about using your powers to save lives! Use your power, save your classmates! GO!”

Tenya grimaced, but his leg-engines roared to life and he streaked past the struggling hero and villain, heading for the front exit.

It was at that precise moment that everything went wrong.

“I think not,” the Villain said. A portal suddenly opened up between himself and Thirteen.. and a second behind the rescue hero. Thirteen shrieked in pain as his armored uniform was ripped open by his own power, and collapsed.

“Sensei!” Ochako lunged forward and caught Thirteen, lowering him gently to the ground. The portal villain took no heed of her; he was too busy twisting and lashing out at Tenya as the speedster boy raced past. But before he could solidify a portal to trap the racer, an enormous pair of hands grasped him by the armored plates around his throat and dashed his smoky body to the ground.

“Gotcha,” Sato jeered, pinning the portal villain to the ground. “Din’t think we’d notice you put ARMOR on part of your ‘intangible’ body, didja?” The boy’s sugar-fueled strength made the metal brace groan and squeak under his fingers.

Iida made it to the doors and squeezed through. Kurogiri saw the boy escape and cursed. He opened up a portal underneath himself and fell through; Sato had to loose his grip and scramble back to keep from falling through as well. “Dammit, almost had him!”Sato fumed.

“Never mind that, Sato, help us with Thirteen !” Ochako said. She and Mina were kneeling next to the prostrate Hero, trying to administer first aid with what little they had in their utility belts.

* * *

It took some time for Izuku, Tsuyu and Minoru to get back…. The last leg of the journey had been across dry land, and Izuku had been forced to let Tsu carry him on her back, much to his embarrassment, just to make time. It was mortifying, but sea ponies weren’t exactly built for land speed.

Handicapped as they were on land (Izuku cursed himself for that fact), they moved covertly, from cover to cover. They reached the central plaza and had to stop-- the fight between Eraserhead and the villains, incredibly, was still going on. They took cover under the hedges, waiting to decide their next move.

The crowd of villains at the central plaza had thinned drastically. Of the dozen that had been standing when Eraserhead first fell among them, only five remained-- chief among them the leader, the man covered with hands, and his huge, black, hulking bodyguard with a fanged metal beak and exposed brain who stood silently behind him throughout everything. Eraserhead was making swift work of the three remaining fighters, but everyone could see that he was flagging.

The last thug hit the dirt. “Ahh, Eraserhead, you live up to your press,” the hand-covered man said, mocking. “What there is of it, anyway.” Eraserhead glared at him. “But, you’ve not kept a close eye on your life meter, have you? You’re on your last dregs… and you’re yet to take on the Boss level.”

“Well then, quickest begun is soonest done, eh?” Eraserhead retorted. In a burst of speed he dashed straight for the villain leader, capture scarf in his fists and hair flying.

The villain suddenly was in motion as well. He ducked aside, grabbing hold of Eraserhead’s leading arm with his hand. Eraserhead’s legs buckled and he screamed. To Izuku’s horror, his teacher’s elbow began to crumble to dust under the villain’s fingers.

The hand-masked man leapt away and… giggled. It was a disturbing sound. “As I thought. You have to stop your Quirk-blocking gaze every few moments to blink. And even with your eyes wide open--”

“Noumu!”

It was faster than the eye could follow; there was a blackish blur and suddenly the huge monstrous bodyguard was standing between Aizawa and his target. A massive fist closed over the teacher’s head, immobilizing him. Izuku could see Aizawa’s eyes blazing through the gaps in Noumu’s fingers as he tried to neutralize the monster’s Quirk… but nothing happened. The Noumu held him up off the ground by his head as easily as if he were palming a softball. “Even with your eyes open, you can’t neutralize all the Noumu’s Quirks,” the hand-masked villain finished. The Noumu grabbed his already-injured arm and wrenched; the students could hear bones snapping like twigs.

“Pin him down, Noumu; I want him to suffer.” The leering monster smashed Eraserhead’s skull to the pavement; blood pooled around its fingers.

An explosion of inky black opened overhead, and the portal Villain reappeared. “Shigaraki, we are out of time!” He exclaimed even before his semi-solid feet hit the ground. “One of the students escaped. A speedster-- he will be beyond our blackout zone in moments--”

The hand-masked one--- Shigaraki--- cursed, and began scratching his neck spastically with his forefingers. “And he will be able to summon the staff by cellphone...”

* * *

“All right, girlies,” the skull-masked villain said, hoisting an insensate Kaminari by his neck and brandishing an enormous knife. Miniature lightning crackled across his skin continuously as he drained Kaminari’s electricity Quirk, using it to boost the power of his own radio-jamming field. The boss had put him up on this miniature mountain in the Landslide Zone with the express job of blocking any radio, cell phone, CB or computer signals as far as his range would reach, and these three teenage idiots were making that little task something of an irritant. “Surrender now or I gut your idiot friend like a--” his threat sputtered to a halt and his eyes went round behind his mask.

“Where the hell did you get a SHOTGUN--”

BOOM, BOOM.

The beanbag rounds caught him in the chest and face, flipping him backwards and knocking him out cold. Momo cracked the double-barrel, ejected the shells, generated two more from her arm, loaded and racked the gun with practiced ease. Jiro grabbed Kaminari and dragged him to safety, then zip-tied the unconscious villain hand and foot while Momo kept him covered. “When did you learn that, Yaoyorozu? And won’t you get in trouble…?”

“My family’s rich,” Momo said tersely, never taking her sights off the villain. “That makes all of us targets for kidnapping or worse. I’ve been trained in firearms use since I could walk, and I’m licensed right up the wazoo.” (A LOT had changed in Japan since the Quirk era started. And what didn’t change, could be bent in a more compliant direction with a sufficient application of Yen.)

Jiro looked up from giving Kaminari first aid. “Hey, the lights stopped flickering.” She gave the villain a kick. “This bozo must’ve been the one jamming the alarms and the distress signals!”

Momo quickly went for her phone. “Quick, check your cellphone! We might be able to raise the alarm, if noone else can--”

* * *

The lights of the USJ dome ceased flickering and began to brighten. Shigaraki cursed again, clawing at his neck. “Our signal jammer just went down,” he snarled. “We ARE out of time, dammit! The heroes will be here en masse any minute!”

“Shall I round up the others?” Kurogiri said, his glowing eyes flaring.

Shigaraki sneered. “Cannon fodder, and nearly worthless,” he said. “Don’t bother. Arrrgh!” He scratched his neck some more. “All this effort to get here to kill All Might--”

Izuku and the others barely strangled a gasp.

“--And we’re going to have to give up! I hate having to go back to the beginning of a level!” He sighed and dropped his hands. “Eh. There’ll be other opportunities. But for now--” his head suddenly snapped around; Izuku found himself staring straight into the maniac’s bloodshot eye. Izuku felt a thrill of terror as he realized _he’d known they were there all along._ “Let’s leave a little message for the Symbol of Peace. Spelled out with the bodies of some of his students!”

Cackling, he lunged for them like a horror monster out of a jump-scare video, unnaturally fast, his hand outstretched.

Izuku’s reaction was pure instinct. Sea Ponies had few options out of the water, but they did have one weapon, one defense, that was as potent as it was dreaded. Underwater, it produced subsonic vibrations that could burst organs and shatter bone; above water it became shrill and piercing, bursting eardrums and capillaries and causing disorientation, drunken imbalance, and pain.

Izuku opened his mouth and sang.

_**SHOOOBEEDOOOBEEDOOOBEEEDOOO** _

The effect was instantaneous. Shigaraki fell to the ground, clutching his head and screaming. The Noumu clapped it’s enormous hands over its ears as well, bellowing and shrieking. Even Kurogiri was affected, his black foggy form rippling and twisting in the onslaught of sound.

It was barely any kinder on the heroes, though; that’s why Izuku had refrained from using it. While the villains were in the center of the cone of attack, the backwash was enough to make both his friends and Aizawa-sensei groan in agony.

“NOUMU!!” Shigaraki screamed, pointing. “KILL THAT ONE NOW!”

It was doubtful the Noumu even needed to be instructed. The moment Shigaraki cried its name, the beast flashstepped to where Izuku crouched. It grabbed the seapony in one massive hand and whipped it back to dash it into the pavement--

Then slowly brought it’s empty hand back down. “Baroo?” it said, staring at its empty hand and scratching at the folds of its exposed brain in confusion.

Tsu cast about frantically, looking for her classmate. Over the deafening silence and the ringing in her own ears she heard a faint “arrrrrrrgh” dopplering into the distance, and saw a tiny half-pony, half-dolphin silhouetted against the dome high above. “IZUKU!”

* * *

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your outlook, seaponies are slippery little devils. When the Noumu had whipped its hand back to dash Izuku into the ground, Izuku had shot out of his grip like a wet watermelon seed and was now inscribing a ballistic arc across the USJ. Izuku had just enough time to think

“It would be really great if One for All would work again _right about now_ ”

before he impacted with the dome of the Downpour zone. He smashed through the thin fabric dome, leaving behind a neat little circle, and disappeared.

* * *

Back in the center plaza, a weeping Tsu cowered next to Mineta and wept as Shigaraki cackled in glee. “OH WELL, THAT WORKS TOO,” he said. He turned to Kurogiri. “OPEN A PORTAL HOME, IT’S TIME TO CUT OUR LOSSES.”

Kurogiri’s glowing eyeslits blinked. “WHAT?”

Shigaraki growled to himself. “I SAID, OPEN A PORTAL HOME!” he shouted.

“YOU WANT ME TO WHAT?” Kurogiri shouted back. It seemed Izuku’s sonic attack was not without consequences.

“I SAID,” Shigaraki shouted, the veins in his neck sticking out from the strain. “O-PEN A POR-TAL!!!”

“YOU WISH TO RETREAT?”

“THAT’S WHAT I--”

“ _Never Fear, for I AM HERE!”_ Everyone spun about (except for Mineta, who’d apparently fainted.) At the top of the stairs leading to the central plaza was All Might. He’d torn away his tie, and he was _not smiling._

Shigaraki’s whole demeanor changed even as Tsu watched. “Ahhh, so we get to see the main event after all,” he said. “Noumu-- KILL HIM!”

The Noumu stood there, unmoving.

Shigaraki swore again. “Noumu, I said ATTACK!” The Noumu stood stock still, staring at him with the blank expression of a cow at an oncoming train. “Dammit his ears still haven’t healed?”

“Baroo?” said the Noumu.

“ _I think his ears haven’t healed yet, Shigaraki!”_ Kurogiri said.

“THAT’S WHAT I---!!! ARRGH!!!” Shigaraki went into another bout of frenzied scratching. With great effort he stopped himself. He began pantomiming for his pet monster. “I--” he pointed to himself. “WANT YOU--” He pointed to the Noumu. “TO ATTACK--” he clawed the air like an anorexic bear.

“Baroo?”

“As entertaining as this is,” All Might said, “I’m afraid I don’t have time for it...” In a blink of an eye he had flashstepped through the Plaza and out the other side. He grabbed Tsu and Mineta, swept up Eraserhead, then blurred back to the entrance where he left them with the others. So few of them… where were the rest of his precious students scattered? “Stay here,” he told the students. “I have a monster to thrash and a villain to stop.” He raced for the hand-covered Mastermind, intent on putting him out with one love-tap punch.

He never made it. He was less than a meter away from Shigaraki when the Noumu finally moved, flash-stepping between the oncoming hero and its master. All Might jerked to a halt, but give him credit, his reflexes were as sharp as ever-- his “love tap” punch swiftly turned into a full-bodied haymaker. His fist slammed into the umber hulk before him, sending off shock waves and making the dome reverberate with the sound of his fist meeting unyielding flesh.

The Noumu didn’t budge. After a moment’s shock, All Might punched him again, harder. The results were almost the same; the pavement under their feet cracked but the Noumu didn’t even move. “Shock Absorption, All Might,” Shigaraki jeered. “Just one of my Noumu’s abilities. He’s been minmaxed to utterly destroy you. And now that I’m sure his eardrums have finally healed-- KILL HIM, NOUMU.”

The Noumu needed no further encouragement. With a chilling screech like steel spikes on a blackboard, it began punching away at the Symbol of Peace.

* * *

In the Storm Zone, Tokoyami’s flare bombs had subdued Dark Shadow again--- barely--- and Koda and Tokoyami were still busy securing their captures. As they were ziptying the last of them, the sky overhead suddenly developed… a hole? As something crashed through it. Whatever it was never reached the ground; it exploded like a firework in a burst of reds, yellows, and greens. Then something silhouetted against the invading beam of sunlight, something with wings, swooped down out of the cloud cover.

“Hey guys! Great to see you’re okay,” Izuku said as the other two hero students stared. “any injuries?” Mutely, they shook their heads. “Great! Hop aboard. All Might needs our help!”

* * *

Kirou and Yaoyorozu were halfway down the slope of the artificial mountain, a still semi-insensate Kaminari trailing behind, when a boiling dark cloud settled over the mountain top. “Oh no, not again,” Kirou groaned. “Look out, the guy with the gate Quirk is back--!”

Momo had a better angle of view. She blinked twice. “Uh, no it isn’t,” she said.

Izuku gestured with a hoof as he dropped down to them. “Come on, get on board, no time to waste--!”

* * *

The last villains too stupid to flee were lying at his feet. Ojiro was staggering, leaning against a scorched street lamp and trying to catch his breath, when the impossible happened-- a torrential downpour swept over the Inferno Zone, quenching the flames and sweeping the smoke from the air…

* * *

As they gained altitude, Izuku looked over into the earthquake zone. At the moment, it looked more like the Inferno zone had; there were explosions everywhere, and villains fleeing to save their hides. And he wasn’t sure but he thought he could hear what sounded like deranged, shrieking laughter…

“Mmmmaybe we’ll get Kacchan later,” he mumbled. “Right now I think he needs this...”

* * *

The plaza thundered with superhuman punches. “You’re wasting your time, All Might!” Shigaraki jeered. “My Noumu has super strength, regeneration and impact absorption! It can soak up anything you dish out for days on end!”

All Might caught the Noumu’s fists and arms in a desperate grapple. Sweat from All Might’s brow was mingling with blood from the corner of his mouth as he fought. He could feel the dwindling sparks of One for All starting to gutter; steam was leaking in wisps from his pores. He feared the decrepit villain was about to prove right.

The sky suddenly darkened. Everyone, even the Noumu, looked up. At some point in the fracas the lesser dome over the Storm Zone had ripped open, and what looked like a miniature thunderhead had poured out. It was rolling across the USJ with surprising swiftness, torrents of rain pouring down out of its belly, miniature dust-devil tornadoes dropping from its leading edge and sending the scattered remnants of the villains flying. As it flew in and hovered overhead, All Might saw something that made him rejoice as much as it flabbergasted him: all of his missing students, standing on the anvil head together. At the leading edge was a tiny green pony-- one with wings, of all things-- hooves planted and flapping for all he was worth. “ _Ain’t that interesting!”_ Izuku shouted. _“Tell me something though, how well does it handle LIGHTNING?”_ He whirled about and gave the flank of the cloud a vicious kick.

Did you know that if you plug a dill pickle into an electrical outlet, it will glow from inside like a lightbulb? It really will.

Briefly.

That was pretty much what happened to the Noumu. On pure instinct All Might let go and leapt backward. A jagged streak of actinic lightning, big and blindingly bright as any he’d ever seen, erupted from the belly of the stormcloud and struck the Noumu square in its metal-braced mouth. It stood there spasming, arms splayed wide, its torso, limbs, and even its brain glowing from inside with sputtering light as it tapdanced to enough wattage to light up Tokyo…

Then its head exploded. Its brain blew in every direction in a cloud of crispy bacon bits. Its teeth whizzed off as dental shrapnel. Its metallic beak buried itself with a _whang_ in the trunk of a nearby tree. It stood a moment more, smoking from its ruined neck, then fell over with an unceremonial _whump._

For a moment there was silence. “….MY NOUMU!!!” he shrieked in disbelief.

“Your charcoal briquette,” Todoroki snarked.

“GIVE IT TO ‘EM, GUYS!” Izuku shouted. Class 1A began raining hell down on Shigaraki and his smoggy underling. Lightning, sparkling energy blasts, lances of ice, purple globes, cellophane sheets and even a few good old fashioned bullets started raining down all around the villains.

“Enough is enough, I think!” Kurogiri said. He swirled around his master, enveloping him in darkness even as he screamed oaths of vengeance. There was a faint pop of air pressure, and they disappeared.

Whoops and cheers sounded the villains’ retreat. The stormcloud slowly lowered to the ground, lightening and shrinking as it went till it disappeared in a puff of vapor as everyone hopped off. All Might watched as the villains disappeared. “Till next time,” he muttered.

Izuku flapped over to All Might. “Are you all right, All Might?” he said anxiously, hovering around the hero. “Is everyone else okay? Aizawa-sensei--”

All Might pointed towards the entrance. “He and Thirteen are with the others,” he said. “The last I saw they were administering First Aid--” there was a tremendous crash at the front gates. The doors had been kicked open, and what seemed to be the entire staff of UA were pouring in.

“Help has returned!” Iida shouted.

All Might saw Recovery Girl among them. He felt his heart unclench as she moved to aid the two fallen teachers. “And aide has arrived in full,” he said to Izuku. “All is well.” He turned and did a quick count of the students present. “We seem to be missing a couple...”

There was a faint KA BOOM off in the direction of the Earthquake Zone, followed by maniacal laughter. “Uhh, Bakugo and Kirishima are in the Quake Zone and were doing fine,” Izuku said hesitantly. There was another explosion, followed by a staccato burst and a loud WHUMP. “Then again you might want to go save what’s left of the villains in the Earthquake Zone from him...”

All Might grimaced. They really needed to give some of these students more of an outlet...

“Oh, you might want to fish the villains out of the Flood Zone too,” Tsu chipped in. “There’s a small raft of them stuck in the middle of the lake.

“There’s a bunch more up on the mountain,” Yaoyoruzu added.

“And… more than a share in the Downpour Zone,” Tokoyami said. “They… may need trauma counseling. Ahem.” He shared an enigmatic look with Dark Shadow.

Before anyone could act on the information, portals suddenly opened up under some of the downed villains in the Plaza, swallowing them whole. “Blast!” Vlad King swore. “Looks like they had an escape plan ready to go--”

Out of nowhere, Ochako lunged across the Plaza and grabbed the Noumu by its ankle. She yanked it off the ground just as a dark portal opened underneath it, and tugged it through the air away from the portal like a toy balloon. “There’s one they DIDN’T get,” Uraraka announced triumphantly. Almost petulantly, the portal snapped shut.

“Good work, young Uraraka!” All Might said. “That body is a crucial piece of evidence.” Uraraka seemed to realize she was holding a dead body by the leg and let it drop to the sidewalk with an “ick” expression vivid on her face.

* * *

Things got very complicated for a while. The police soon arrived, and were preoccupied with securing the few villains who hadn’t vanished into thin air… as well as the body of the Noumu. (They finally managed to drag Bakugou and Kirishima-- and a pile of badly dented and unconscious villains-- out of the Quake Zone. Kirishima was looking shell-shocked; Bakugou was looking mellower than he had in years, Izuku thought.)

As everyone bustled to put out the fires (metaphorical and literal) and secure the USJ, All Might saw Izuku standing there, watching as they loaded what was left of the Noumu into a police truck. He had a suspicion as to what was troubling the young colt-- er, young lad. It was his lightning bolt, after all, that had slain the beast…

He knelt beside Izuku and rested one hand on his withers. “Do not trouble yourself, young Midoriya,” he said in as gentle a voice as he could manage. “You did only what was absolutely necessary. If anything, it was a mercy blow; from what Recovery Girl has told me, the Noumu was in terrible constant pain, and would not have survived for much longer. It is doubtful there was anything human left in that poor creature, if there was any to begin with.”

Izuku shook his head and pawed the ground with one hoof. “This… that isn’t what’s bothering me,” he said. _Not right now, anyway,_ he thought. “This… this was a test, wasn’t it.” He looked up at All Might, his eyes wide and haunted.

“A test,” All Might said.

“The villains,” Izuku said. “They were testing us.” He shook his head. “If this had been a real attack, they would have been better prepared-- better equipped-- better trained-- ” he scowled. “If they’d really wanted to k-kill….” he choked on the word but rallied. “IF they really wanted to kill All Might, they would have had a dozen of those monsters, not just one. And the thugs they threw at us would have been trained to an inch of their lives and armed to the teeth.

“Instead they threw one dimwitted monster and a bunch of disorganized rabble at us and yelled ‘sic em.’” He snorted. His eyes were downcast. “They’re going to be back, aren’t they. And next time...”

“And next time, you’ll be even stronger,” All Might finished. He raised his voice so all the students gathered could hear. “Tougher. Smarter. Better trained. You already gave an accounting of yourselves they clearly never expected.” He chuckled and looked around the Plaza; many of the students were rattled, but optimistic. They were far more confident and full of bravado than he would have expected of a handful of teenagers in such circumstances. “You all have come through a crucible, and you came out _shining._

“You say they’ll try again? I I look at you all and say let them come. _And let them beware.”_

Izuku raised his head at the words. The ghost of a smile graced his face. Out of the corner of his eye All Might saw the other students stand a little taller, their shoulders a little straighter.

All Might's smile grew wider. Oh yes indeed. _Molon Labe,_ ‘League of Villains.’

“ _Aye! Bravo!”_

“ _Hear Hear!”_

_Across the cosmos, two sisters raised their tankards and downed their mead in salute._


	5. Chapter 5

“A speech?”

To say this was an unexpected bit of news was to say too little. Even when he’d still been walking around on two feet instead of four hooves, Izuku had never, ever been called up for anything, especially not to make a speech.

“Yes, a speech,” Aizawa confirmed in a flat monotone. “Usually an athlete’s pledge, but...” he shrugged as if expounding on the difference was simply too much effort.

“But why me?” Izuku protested, holding a hoof up to his chest.

Aizawa folded his hands behind his back and regarded Izuku severely… from a safe distance, but severely all the same. “The UA Sports Festival is one of the most important events in a Student Hero’s scholastic year,” he said. “An opportunity for them to demonstrate just who they are and what they are capable of before the Pro-Heroes of the world. It is also an opportunity for U.A. to put its best and brightest on display. That would be you.”

“But--”

“Your academic scores are in the ninetieth percentile, where they are not higher,” Aizawa continued. “And your practical skills are… quite frankly… ridiculously high as well. And anyway you were, in fact, the highest scoring applicant in the Practical Admissions Test--” From somewhere in the distance a strangled Bakugo ‘arrrrgh’ could be heard--- “That means you get to deliver a speech and make the Athlete’s Pledge at the beginning of the Sports Festival.”

Izuku huddled in place with all four hooves together and his tail tucked around him. “But… I’ve never given a speech in front of anyone before. Not ever!”

“Learn.” With that unsympathetic advice, Aizawa left to track down his sleeping bag.

Izuku stood in the hallway for a moment, silently panicking. Then he galloped off down the hallway to his next class, his mind racing so fast it could have done laps around his hooves. The Sports Festival was less than a month away and he was going to have to stand up in front of the entire school-- the entire WORLD-- and give a speech. What was he going to do?

As the Festival approached, the students of class 1-A hit their training with a fervor. Sparring, endurance training, weight training, and more; the teachers and parents frequently had to step in and force them to slow their pace, and re-emphasize that when it came to training that overdoing it could be as bad or worse than underdoing it.

All Might was no exception. He found himself down at Dagobah beach the first weekend, trying to counsel his chosen successor.

Despite all their work over the summer rendering the beach pristine, people were people and dumped trash and litter had begun to accumulate at the far end of the sandy stretch. The boy… er, colt?… was down at the beach in what he called his ‘earth pony’ form, using a makeshift harness of ropes and belts to drag away the piles of trash and junk that someone had shamefully dumped there while its self-appointed caretakers had been off at school.

At the moment he was hauling away a refrigerator that someone had abandoned on the shore (an entire refrigerator? Yagi could see someone litterbugging, but nobody just dropped a major household appliance by accident!) “I promise I’m not over-exerting myself, Toshinori-san,” the diminutive green pony protested as his tiny hooves dug furrows in the sand. “I’ve only been out here two times this week...”

“Yes,” Toshinori jested dryly. “Every morning and every evening.” Izuku flushed and didn’t meet his eye, but kept on hauling. “Please, young Midoriya, if just for my and your mother’s peace of mind--”

“Okay, okay,” Izuku sighed as he dragged the fridge to the street where a flatbed truck stood waiting. “I was almost done anyway… can I at least finish up?”

“Not without help,” Toshinori said. “And if you do come back here, at least have me or at least one of your classmates to help.” Izuku mumbled something noncommittal as he shrugged out of the straps. “I do have to admit,” Toshinori went on as he looked over everything, “this is quite an accomplishment in your, er, ‘earth pony’ shape...” He saw Izuku trying to lever the fridge up into the flatbed and reached out one beefy hand to help.

“Actually, I’ve been switching off my forms,” Izuku said. “I tend to wake up in a different one every morning these days. The pegasus form was really the least useful for this. Though it did let me make a dust devil to sweep up the light litter.” The fridge thumped into the bed of the truck and he paused. “Though since I have three different forms, does that mean I need three times more exercise? Or maybe just three different exercise regimes?” He started to slip off into a bout of his trademark muttering and began looking around for something. “Oh right, no notebook. Not that I could write in it that easy right now anyways...” he looked at one hoof ruefully.

“Get a tape recorder,” All Might suggested. “They have voice activated ones.” He paused. Toshinori would be the first to admit that cunning and intellect weren’t his strong points (His brain, he would often jokingly say, was his Achilles Heel) but he did have his moments, and he regarded his scion as he got a rare moment of insight. “You’re not out here just because you want to buff up a little before the Festival, are you?” he said. “Something else is bothering you. The speech?”

“...The speech,” Izuku agreed, his rump thumping down in the sand. “It.. it’s the speech. All Might, I’ve never been… popular. Never been the center of attention, or the sort of person everbody else looked to, or volunteered to speak or lead-- Up till I joined U.A. I was just the kid in the back row. I nearly had a heart attack when they tried to make me class representative! I don’t know how to deal with it.

“And now I have to give a speech at the start of the Sports Festival. I know you said this was my first opportunity to say to everyone, “I am here.” How can I do that for everyone? How can I possibly stand up in front of _the whole world_ and speak for my _entire class?”_

All Might squatted down in the sand next to him. He put one massive hand on Izuku’s withers. “You’re afraid to speak for others, because you don’t know what’s on their hearts,” he said. “Well the answer’s simple.” The colt looked up at him. “Speak to them, young Midoriya! Listen to them, ask them why it is they’re here, what it means to them to be here. I think you’ll find that you all have something deep down in common. Then you’ll be able to stand up for them and say ‘We are here, and this is why!”

Izuku looked thoughtful. “I suppose I do need to get to know my classmates better,” he said. He nearly toppled facefirst into the sand when All Might clapped him on the back.

“There you go then!” All Might said confidently. “Never fear, young Midoriya; you’ll do fine!”

“So, why do you want to become a hero?” Izuku said as he galloped on the treadmill (it was a ‘unicorn day,’ but Izuku exercised all three of his forms regardless. His dream mentors were fairly confident that the benefits would carry over from form to form) next to Ochako. They were working out in one of the school’s many exercise rooms. The gravity girl was jogging along at a good pace on her own treadmill, her eyes fixed on the meters in front of her. They both were decked out in UA gym suits and sweatbands. A tiny part of Izuku’s mind noted that she filled hers out a lot better than he did--

He shook his head till his mane flopped in his eyes. _Enough of that, Izuku, focus man, focus---_

At his question Ochako blushed, to Izuku’s surprise. “I’d really rather not--” she started to say. She looked away, then sighed and stopped her treadmill before sitting down on it. “It’s not very honorable,” she said, her head hanging down.

“Oh, uh--” Izuku looked up at the control pad on his own treadmill. He couldn’t see the buttons from this angle. “Uhh-- could you--?” he said urgently, still galloping along.

“Oh!” Ochako hopped up and hit the stop button for him. He slowed to a trot, then a walk, then stopped. He sat down on the treadmill with a sigh of relief. “That’s better,” he said. “We probably better walk a little bit though, to keep from getting cramps.”

“Oh, yes.” They began walking around the perimeter of the room at an idle pace, cooling down. “Why do you think it’s dishonorable?” Izuku finally got the courage to venture.

Ochako flushed again, and patted her neck down with a towel. “I… I’m not doing it for the noble reasons you have, Izuku,” she said. “To protect people, to make them feel safe because you’re there-- Oh I want all that too, but the real reason...” she hesitated, letting the towel drape around her neck. “It’s for the money. For my family.”

“My family runs a construction business,” she went on. “It’s not exactly wildly successful.”

“Huh. I would think with all the heroes and villains around, smashing buildings and stuff, it’d be a growth industry,” Izuku said.

Ochako chuckled. “Well yes, but that also means there’s lots and lots of competition,” she said. “And little small-potatoes companies like ours have trouble keeping up with the big companies who have better equipment and, well, that can hire people with more powerful Quirks useful in construction.”

“Ahh,” Izuku nodded. He could imagine what it would be like for a typical construction company competing against another who had workers like, say, Cementoss on their payroll.

“When I was little, being a Pro Hero seemed like-- a silly fantasy. I expected to grow up and use my Quirk to help my family in the business,” she said. “My mother and father wouldn’t hear of it. ‘This business is OUR dream,’ they’d say. ‘Nothing would make us happier than you going after yours.’” She stopped walking and clenched one fist, her face full of determination. “That’s when I decided I _was_ going to be a Pro Hero. I was going to become a rich and successful Pro Hero so that my family would never want for anything ever again.”

Izuku was surprised. Such a burden for someone as young as her to take on….! She flushed a bit. “It’s not selfless or noble like you or All Might--”

Izuku interrupted her. “No, Ochako! It is! It’s one of the most noble and honorable things I’ve ever heard. You want to be a hero to make your family’s lives better; nothing’s more honorable than that.”

She smiled. “I…. thank you for saying that,” she said faintly. “Sometimes though it seems all so far away. And… this Sports Festival! So much hanging on it. And I’m not the strongest, not nearly as strong as I need to be--”

“You’re strong enough,” Izuku said firmly. Surprised, she looked down at him. He was looking up at her with a smile on his pony face. “I think you’re going to amaze yourself with just how strong you are.”

She smiled back, her flush deepening. “I have to go--” she said suddenly. “… classes...” she turned and jogged off, leaving Izuku with much to think about.

“...I chose this path due to my family heritage, of course,” Iida said, his hand chopping the air over his cafeteria tray as he spoke. “Pro Heroing has been a legacy in the Tenya family almost since the dawn of Quirks. I am honored to follow in their footsteps, especially in the footsteps of my brother, the Pro Hero Ingenium. I intend to equal him-- no, to surpass him! To bring honor to my family like none before.”

Izuku pushed his own tray up onto the table next to him. “That’s pretty ambitious,” he said.

Iida paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. For the briefest moment Izuku saw a fleeting look of uncertainty cross the rigid boy’s face. “It is,” he said. “I often wonder if I am able to live up to it. There are so many challenges ahead of us over the next three years, and they are not going to get any easier as we go forward. It can be… daunting.” He resumed eating, as if he regretted speaking.

At his words, Izuku felt… _intimidated._ Whether you were talking academics or skills or sheer Quirk power, Iida was one of the highest-ranking students in the hero course. If he felt uncertain about his own future as a Pro Hero what did that say about Izuku, with his borrowed Quirk and his laughable pony form?

...Which he was going to parade in front of the entire world in less than two weeks. He stifled a groan. “Iida,” he said suddenly. “You’ve given speeches. I mean, I assume you have, you seem like the sort of student to have been really involved at your own school and...” he stopped himself. “What I mean is; do you have any advice for my speech--”

“Of course,” Iida boomed. “I would be delighted to provide you assistance in drafting your speech for the Sports Festival! I have several guides which you MUST peruse at depth.” He bobbed down to his book bag and pulled several weathered looking books out.

He began stacking them up in front of the pony, shoving his lunch tray aside. “First of course is Strunk and White’s ‘The Elements of Style.’ Then there’s the collection of 100 of the most influential speeches from the past 50 years. And Robert’s Rules of Order…. I read that daily!”

“Oh… boy….” Izuku said, his ears drooping as the volumes stacked up.

“Take a look at me, Midoriya.”

Izuku blinked. The statement had been in a surprisingly serious tone. “Excuse me?”

“I said _take a look at me,_ Midoriya,” Mineta repeated himself. His stare was uncanny. He leaned forward in his train seat, glaring at Izuku. “Look at me and tell me what you see.”

“Iiiii….” Izuku was at a loss.

The grape-haired boy rolled his eyes. “Short,” Mineta said. “I’ll say it for you. I’m short. I’m a  _dwarf,_ okay?” He kicked his feet for emphasis; his legs were so short that his feet didn’t reach the floor of the train car. “I’m short, and also  _ugly,_ and---” he pointed to his head---” I have a weird, kinda gross Quirk  _that makes detachable lumps grow on my head._ So, Mr. Muttering Mensa Man, tell me: what kind of chance do I have with girls?”

“I… um. That is… my mother always says there’s someone for everyone--” Izuku stammered.

Mineta’s expression practically shouted ‘oh please.’ “ Izuku, have you ever looked at a MatchStick profile? Every girl has the same opening line: ‘no short guys.’ They flat out say they won’t date a guy who’s less than five foot nine. Of course, may the gods have mercy on any guy who says ‘no fatties,’ buncha hypocrites. And they’re just as bad about guys with mutation Quirks...” He trailed off into a surly mutter. “You have no idea what it’s like.”

“Ahem,” Izuku cleared his throat pointedly. Then gestured to all of himself with his forehoof.

Mineta just scowled further. “Oh don’t be obtuse, it’s not the same thing and you know it,” he said. “Every girl in school lines up to scratch your ears or pet your mane or pick you up and rub your tummy--” he was starting to sound rather jealous.

“That only happened once,” Izuku said, his face hot.

“Pfft.”

“And anyway, I don’t see what that all has to do with my question,” Izuku pressed on.

“Doesn’t it? You asked why I want to become a Pro Hero. There’s your answer; I want to be popular and for pretty girls to like me.”

“Well, m-maybe if you were nicer to them, and didn’t make such crude comments all the time--” Izuku couldn’t keep from pointing out.

“And where’s my motivation?” Mineta said dryly. “Kaminari is an even bigger perv than I am, and he’s doing fine with the ladies. Leastways they don’t look at him like he’s something they stepped in. If he looked like a jock they’d be hanging off his biceps and giggling at all the “pervy” things he said. Me? heck, everyone treats me like a squashed toad even when I’m on my best behavior.

“Face it, the only way a girl’s going to give me the time of day is if I won the national lottery, I suddenly gained an extra meter in height, or I become a Pro Hero. Why? Because Pro Heroes can be ugly as roadkill and half as charming and everyone loves them. Girls flock to them, People praise them and take pictures of them. Nobody kicks THEM to the curb, or gives them swirlies or wedgies or stuffs them in a locker--” he interrupted himself. “People LIKE them.”

Izuku sat back, the rather ugly picture Mineta’s words had inadvertently painted  of his life before U.A. turning in his head. “But… being liked?” He finally said gently. “Is that really an important enough reason to…?”

“It’s important enough that people end their own lives by the hundreds every year because they have to live without it,” Mineta said. “All over Japan, all over the world, people snuffin’ it because they thought they were all alone and everybody hated them--”

“Y-you shouldn’t say such things!” Izuku said. “That’s… drastic!”

“Oh really? Tell me, how was it for you before YOU came to U.A.?” Mineta said with sudden sharpness.

“Me??”

“I’m not a dummy, Izuku. Top scores in our class, remember? And it doesn’t take a genius IQ to figure out you and Bakugao went to school together and he bullied you. And he’s got such a big fat head, he obviously ruled the roost, everybody was his best friend\-- and you were the school outcast. Am I right? Tell me I’m not right. Tell me; how close did YOU get to breaking? ‘Cause I got pretty damn close.”

Memories flitted through Izuku’s mind; of climbing up to the school rooftop, of looking through the chainlink fence down at the pavement far below, wondering if he had the nerve, if it was high enough-- Izuku shuddered.  Mineta gave him a sad, knowing smile; it made him look like a little old man.

“So I decided to become a Pro Hero,” he said. “Oh, with my grades I could probably work for the government or some corporation. But I’d just end up going from an ugly, short, weirdo teenager to an ugly, short, weirdo salaryman, spend the rest of my life grinding up to CEO, going out every weekend to a girly bar, until I finally ended up leaving my ten thousand yen patent leather shoes on a rooftop ledge.” He scooted back in his seat. “Or I could do something crazy and become a Pro Hero.”

He pulled one of the sticky balls off his head and held it up. “My classmates laughed at me. My teachers laughed at me. Even my  _Dad_ laughed at me. But other than my brains, this… this is all I got.  I’ve spent my whole life as a joke. This,” he bobbled  the sticky purple ball in his hand, “is my last chance, my ONLY chance, to be something that people respect.”  He shrugged and tossed the hairball in his backpack. “And at the very least, if nothing else,  even if all the people who call me a joke and a freak and a loser and a failure are right and I never make it, I can say ‘hey! At least I was doing something good and noble and heroic while I was at it.”

H e turned and looked out the window, leaving Izuku to stare into space and ruminate what he’d heard.  He didn’t think he’d ask Mineta for any advice on his speech.

“What? Well come on, it seems pretty obvious,” Kirishima said, his words punctuated by the staccato rhythm of his fists in the punching bag.

“How?” Izuku said.

“Well come on,” Kirishima said, laughing as he continued pummeling the sandbag. “I’m not smart enough to be a businessman, not good lookin’ enough to be a movie star, not talented enough to be an artist… but thanks to my Quirk, what I can do is take a punch--” he triggered his Quirk, Harden, his skin turning rocky and craggy. “And give as good as I get!” He hauled off and punched the sandbag with his jagged fist. There was a tearing noise and sand began leaking onto the gym floor. “Ah, nuts...”

“I’ll get the broom!” Ashido called from across the gym. She’d been working the speed bag, practicing her fast punches and kicks. She trotted off for the supply closet. Apparently this wasn’t the first time Kirishima had made a sandy mess out of a punching bag.

Kirishima set about lowering and unhooking the bag before it sprayed sand everywhere.  “ What’s wrong?” Kirishima said at the expression on Izuku’s face. 

“I don’t mean to be rude, b-but that seems, I don’t know, defeatist,” Izuku said.

Kirishima sort of huffing laugh. “Why?” he said. He sat down on the un-deflated end of the sandbag. “Midoriya-san, the way I see it, how my Dad always said it, we all start this life with a, a box of  _things,”_ he said, gesturing effusively. “Talents, brains, wealth, family--”

“Quirks,” Ashido chipped in. She’d returned with a couple of brooms, a dustpan and a wheeled trash can. She handed one off to Kirishima and began sweeping.

“Right. _Advantages_. Some people have more, some have less. But that’s your starter kit, and you gotta make the best use of it you can. And it’s only smart to use the best tools in the box the most, because those are the ones you’re _meant_ to use.” He shrugged and got to his feet. “Me? My Quirk is the best tool in my toolbox. And Destiny doesn’t exactly give you a Quirk like mine if you’re meant to be a fry cook or bag groceries.” He started sweeping, gathering the loose sand into a pile at his feet.

“Ditto,” Ashido said, giving Izuku a wink. “I’ve heard this speech from him before, and I agree with him.. mostly.”

“Mostly?” Kirishima and Izuku said.

“Hell yah.” She struck a pose with her broom, leg curled around it and back arched, that made the two teenage boys’ brains sweat. “I TOTALLY could be a movie star with this bod. Or a fashion model. Or a bikini model...” she trailed off in musings.

“Please stop there,” Izuku begged, his furry green face flaming.

“But the Pro Hero life’s the one for me,” she went on. “Doing kewl stuff, and making the world a better place doing it? Totes!” Her lip curled in wry amusement. “Of course I might have changed my mind if I’d known how much regular school BRAIN stuff was involved...”

“Ditto,” Kirishima said, dumping a dustpan’s worth of sand in the waste bin. “Leastways if I’d thought I was going it on my own.” He stopped and gave his gal-pal a bro fist. She returned it with a grin.

He grinned, his jagged teeth bright and sharp, but kind of rueful. “It’s a lot harder than I’d thought it would be,” he said. “And we don’t have really big, flashy powers like you or some of the others. It’s gonna be tough to stand out--”

“Flashy powers? Me?” Izuku tried to protest.

Ashido laughed. “Puh-lease, pony boy! Your powers flash. And sparkle. And _glitter._..”

“Do not,” Izuku denied, huffing a bit.

“Do too,” Kirishima chuckled. “At least when they’re not _exploding._ You’re still doing that every morning, right? _”_ While nothing like the first time, Izuku’s irregular metamorphoses still seemed to come with their own rather audacious light show.

“Mom had to hang blackout curtains in my room to keep me from waking the neighbors,” Izuku confessed sheepishly. The other two chuckled at the embarrassed little pony shuffling its hooves.

The smile suddenly fled from Kirishima’s face. “I’m not sure what I’m gonna do if I can’t make it here,” he said. “Not everyone back home was a morale booster, you know? Kept telling me guys with ‘toughen up’ quirks like mine are a dime a dozen.”

“So why…?”

The grin returned. “Hey, you gotta press on. No matter what. It’s the only manly thing to do.”

“So Ochako is becoming a Pro Hero to give her family a better life? That’s rather noble. And sweet, too,” Momo said. She looked up from her history book, chewing on her pencil idly. “That’s more common than people realize, I think. Tsu told me much the same thing.”

“Really?” Izuku said. He kept his voice down to not disturb the librarian. He’d joined Momo in the school library ostensibly for study hall.

Momo nodded. “Her parents both work, so she has to spend most of her free time caring for her younger brother and sister. If she becomes a Pro, she could afford to hire a housekeeper or a nanny to help out. Or maybe just give her parents enough money so that they don’t have to both work.”

“Gee...” Izuku said sympathetically. He knew his own Mom had worked her fingers to the bone raising him on her own after his father left, but having to raise two little kids as a teenager? That had to be exhausting. Not to mention lonely…

Momo looked thoughtful. “Hmph. You know, if Ochako and I switched Quirks, neither of us would have the problems we do?”

“Problems? What sort of problems?” Izuku said.

Momo looked around briefly. “Here,” she said. She frowned in concentration. The skin on her forearm glowed briefly and she pulled a thin, sparkly bracelet off her arm. She dropped it on Izuku’s open history book. “A gift, for your mother if you like.”

Izuku looked at the bracelet in puzzlement. It was made of tiny green stones, set in the links of a golden chain-- his eyes went wide as saucers as he realized what it had to be. “Is this--? Are these--??”

“Emeralds,” Momo said, keeping her voice low. “Set in an 18 carat gold chain. Oh, the gems would never sell on the market-- they have flaws in the stone, and they’re obviously synthetic to any gemologist-- but you get the point.”

“ _You can just whip up gold and gemstones with your Quirk whenever you want?”_ Izuku whisper-screamed. “Holy cow, no wonder you’re family’s rich!!”

“Well, not a LOT of gold, not all at once,” she confessed. “I have to strain my power for even just a few troy ounces, and any more than that--” she poked a finger at the delicate bracelet-- “and it leaves me with low blood iron for days.” She shook her head. “The real money’s not in making gems or precious metals anyway.

“Many of the people in my family have some sort of Creation Quirk. They use their Quirks to create fine arts and crafts, jewelry, specialized goods… one of my cousins makes custom-made microchips for scientists and researchers.

“What really put us over the top was my Great Grandfather. He had a Creation Quirk that let him make materials _that never existed_ _before_ _._ Things like room-temperature superconductors. Super-strong alloys. Stuff like that. All he had to know was what it was supposed to do, what properties it was supposed to have, and he could fabricate it. He could only make a few grams at a time, but aerospace companies and government agencies paid him top dollar for it. They’re still trying to find ways to mass-produce some of the things he created… but it made us rich.”

“...Wow,” Izuku said weakly.

“If Ochako had my power, she wouldn’t need to be a Pro Hero to make her family rich. There are a hundred ways a poor family could use my power to make their own lives far more comfortable...” Momo shrugged.

Izuku looked at her, his head tilted. “You said if you had each other’s Quirks, then both your problems would be solved,” he said leadingly.

Momo gave him a wry smile. “To a poor family, my Quirk would be a boon,” she said. “To a wealthy family like mine?  One full of Quirks that would make any family rich? It’s  _redundant._ ”  Her mouth twisted. “If I’d had a power like Ochako’s, something that broke the mould, maybe they would have let me break away and be my own person. But...” She shook her head.”  My family is a throwback. If you can’t contribute directly to the family’s business, you contribute indirectly by looking pretty and marrying well.  My mother especially sees me as little more than ornamentation; to her way of thinking my duty is to sit still, look pretty, become a trophy wife  and produce grandchildren on cue.

“I decided to become a Pro Hero to prove that I wasn’t an ornament. That I can do something more worthwhile with my life than wear pretty dresses at cocktail parties and pop out heirs for the empire.” She sighed. “But since my Quirk isn’t directly useful for combat or rescue work, because it isn’t what _she_ wanted, my Mother is constantly picking at me to ‘give up this nonsense’...” She scribbled something down in her notebook, jabbing at it with her pencil fiercely. “But I’m not about to. I’m not going to be an ornament. I’m going to be a hero, and make something of my life, whether they want to let me or not.” She looked up, suddenly apologetic. “I’m sorry, I… shouldn’t have let my personal issues...”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Izuku stammered, waving a hoof awkwardly.

“Anyway… weren’t you asking for advice about your speech?” She went on.

“I… it… maybe later,” Izuku fudged. “We were working on this History homework right now--”

“Ah.” Perhaps wisely, they both let the subject drop.

Izuku lounged on a cloud. It was “Pegasus Time” in his Dream-Realm Classroom, and Rainbow Dash was very much a teach-by-doing sort of alicorn. It could be rough at times, but he had to admit he learned the principles of Pegasus abilities and learned them _fast._

Still, it was fortunate that Fluttershy was usually there to keep her on an even keel. Dream realm or not, Izuku suspected that otherwise Rainbow Dash would have managed to half kill him.

Today though the lesson (some of the finer points of weather control, like how to change a raincloud into a snowcloud) had been set aside. Izuku had broken down and confessed his anxiety over the coming Sports Festival, and most of all over The Speech (that’s how he thought of it, in capital letters.) Dash had heard one sentence of his anxiety laden mumbling, said “this ain’t my game; this is Egghead stuff” and fetched the others.

They were all together now, lounging on various clouds huddled together in a blue sky. Izuku had completely spilled his guts. “...and I’m running out of time and still don’t have a CLUE what to say, not a word,” he babbled, lying on his back, his hooves curled up to his belly.

Applejack gave Celestia a wry look. “How d’ya rate that on a Twilight Sparkle Meltdown scale, princess?” she said.

“Oh, a five out of ten,” Celestia said drolly, crossing her forehooves and winking. “He hasn’t even leveled any buildings or started any stampedes yet.” Twilight glowered and stuck her tongue out at both of them.

“So you spoke to your classmates, trying to get some advice on your speech-- and maybe to get a better feel for them,” Celestia said to Izuku. “And what do you feel now?”

Izuku worried his lip. “I feel… small,” he said faintly.

The princesses, all of them, cocked their heads and looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?” Fluttershy said.

“It’s...” he rolled over onto his belly. “All this time I’ve been chasing my dream of being a hero, I never really thought about the ‘why,’ beyond being like All Might and helping people everywhere with a smile. I always thought that was a pretty noble goal, you know?

“But then I talked to my classmates, and their dreams and goals. Some of them like Asui and Ochako are trying to make life better for their families. Some are trying to live up to a century-old family legacy-- or break away from it. Some of them like Hagakure and Aoyama are trying to be heroes even though anywhere else their Quirks would make them practically _disabled._ Even “shallow” ones like Mineta are trying to prove themselves to a world that laughed at them and spit in their face.

“In the face of all these noble goals, their lifetime of hard work and struggles, my ambitions feel truly shallow. Like every other little boy who wanted to play Hero,” he said scornfully, “and got lucky, more stupidly lucky than he ever deserved. How can I possibly speak for them?”

A silver-shod hoof pressed against his muzzle. _“Enough.”_

The Princess of the Night looked at him, her brows furrowed sternly. Her tone however was almost playful. “Hast thou forgotten thyself, young Midoriya?” she said. “Hast thou forgotten thy tenacity, thy faith which thou didst not relinquish over all these years? Hast thou forgotten thy courage, in defending others at great cost to thyself, even when thou didst have no powers at all? Hast thou forgotten the sacrifices thou made, of blood and sweat and tears? For I assure thee, _we who watched thee_ _all these years_ _have not.”_

The circle of alicorns made various sounds of affirmation to that. “Indeed,” Celestia said. “You crawled to the front gates of that school on _broken bones,_ my little Pony. You paid your dues, would that you remembered that.”

“Would that some of THEM remembered that, the graceless sods,” Rarity muttered.

“Hear hear,” Rainbow Dash agreed.

Izuku started to puddle up. He hastily pulled a tuft of cloud loose and wiped his face. “T-thank you,” he said. “But… still… this SPEECH...”

“Izuku,” Celestia said gently. He stopped frittering and looked at her. “Deep down, at root, you have so much more in common with the heroes you admire. When the time comes to speak, the words don’t matter so long as you _speak from the heart.”_

“Good luck, Izuku.”

\--- Then there was a buzzer ringing in his ear. He opened his eyes and looked blearily up at the ceiling. It was the morning of the Sports Festival, and he still didn’t have a speech ready. Not one word.

“This is not looking auspicious,” he mumbled.

The morning, at least for Izuku, was spent in a haze. Breakfast, his mother alternating between cheering for him, wishing him luck, bursting into tears, and giving him hugs as if she thought she’d seen the last of him, the ride to the school and immediately from there to the stadium…

And now here he was, standing in his (pony-sized) school athletic uniform, shoulder to shoulder with the rest of his class (and all the other eleven first-year classes!) in the middle of a stadium packed with people that looked to be half the size of the world all by itself.

He’d woken up a unicorn, so rather than waste energy triggering a metamorphosis he decided to roll with it and see how far he got. That was the last thing on his mind at the moment, though. The moment he’d trotted out onto the stadium floor he’d nearly had a heart attack at the sight of all the people in the stands.

Staring. At. Him.

A wave of muttering and confusion had arisen at the sight of a little green horse wearing an AU uniform. Was this some sort of joke? Maybe it was a mascot of some kind. Despite everything, the school had actually managed to keep Izuku’s existence more or less on the down low, or at least off the front page of the news (largely by All Might, brave soul, shoving himself into the spotlight to distract them.) But as word spread from the few that knew the truth—yes, this WAS a UA student, and in the Pro Hero class to boot!-- the mutterings grew louder. And got joined by growing laughter.

Barely twenty paces into the stadium and Izuku was hunched down so low his belly was almost brushing the grass.

They took their place before the stand in the center of the field, forming neat columns and rows with their classes and standing at attention as they’d been instructed. Midnight, in her full “R-rated Heroine” glory (good grief woman, there were teenage boys present, can’t she give it a rest for one day? Izuku thought) took the stand and marched up to the microphone. Her voice boomed out over the loudspeaker system.

“Welcome, one and all, to the Annual U.A. Sports Festival!”

Applause, loud and enthusiastic, filled the air on cue. The heroine gave it a few moments to die down, then spoke again in the silence. “We will commence with the opening ceremonies now, with a speech from this year’s current number one student, Midoriya Izuku!”

...That was his cue. Izuku swallowed heavily and slowly walked up through the rows of students to the stage. His mouth was dry and his heart was pounding. A few of his classmates clapped or called out words of encouragement… he barely heard them.

The microphone was lowered to his height so that he could speak into it. He stepped up to it, wet his lips and looked out at his audience.

The class of 1-A, front and center, Ochako in the front row right in front of him, mouthing the words ‘you can do it.’ The 200-odd students of the other classes, regimented in rows and columns on the field, the stands, full of countless thousands…

In the stands, indistinguishable from the thousands around him in his diminished form, Toshinari Yagi waited for his protege to tell the world he was there...

In Musafutu Heights, an anxious single mother sat on the edge of her couch, nibbling on popcorn anxiously as she watched the world wait for her baby boy to speak...

_Somewhere across the distant astral planes, a congregation of eight alicorn princesses had gathered and were watching avidly. The room was packed with bottles of soda, bowls of popcorn and chips, and an utterly obscene amount of cookies, candies and junky snacks (Pinkie Pie had really come through.) They sat forward on the edge of their cushions, hardly daring to breathe…_

Izuku dropped his eyes down to his classmates again. He finally knew what he had to say.

“I can’t.”

The world held its breath.

“I can’t… do what I’ve been asked to do here. I can’t speak for all the students at UA. Or even the ones in my class, class 1-A.” He looked up. “Their dreams, their goals, their burdens, their struggles--” he gave a rueful little laugh, but his eyes shone. “They’re all so much… BIGGER than I am.” He looked at Ochako, then Iida standing next to her, Ashido in the far corner, Kirishima and Mineta to the side. “They’re all… Braver. Stronger. Nobler. Than anybody in this stadium will ever know. Than even some of their classmates know. So how can I dare to presume to speak for them with a speech, or an oath?

“The only thing I really have in common with them all-- the one thing I know that speaks in all their hearts the same as mine: _I have so much farther yet to go--_ ” he broke off, and even the dullest eyes in the stands could see the sorrow and feeling in his eyes. When he raised his voice again, he started out speaking, but slowly, his voice began to waver in song.

“I can almost see it, that dream we’re dreaming--

“There’s a voice inside my head saying you’ll never reach it…

Every step I’m taking, every move I make feels

Lost without direction, my faith is shaking..

But I, I gotta keep trying--

“ _Gotta keep my head held high--”_

Across the stadium, music began to waft from the speakers.

_Twilight Sparkle squeed. “Is it--”_

“ _Yes it is,” Celestia exclaimed in delight. “His first heartsong.”_

“ _An’ it looks to be a humdinger,” Applejack said with a grin._

By the time Izuku reached the chorus, both his voice and the phantasmal accompaniment had swelled. He didn’t know where the music was coming from, or the words-- no, he thought as he sang and felt the warmth in his chest. He knew.

“There's always gonna be another mountain  
I'm always gonna wanna make it move  
Always gonna be an uphill battle  
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose  
Ain't about how fast I get there  
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side

  
“ _It's the climb--!!_

He wasn’t the only one singing now. To his astonishment, and hers, at the start of the second verse Ochako stepped forward and joined him in a duet. Her sweet alto matched his in perfect harmony; she had no idea how but she knew the words and the tune as if she’d been singing them every day for a hundred years-- and oh how they spoke to her--

“The struggles I'm facing  
The chances I'm taking  
Sometimes might knock me down but  
No I'm not breaking--

Then Iida, of all souls, joined in (he had a remarkable tenor). Then Yaoyoruzo. Then Mineta, his voice cracking on the high notes… by the end of the second verse all of 1-A had joined in… by the end of the second chorus, 1-B was singing as well.

Then every class, A through H.

“There's always gonna be another mountain  
I'm always gonna wanna make it move  
Always gonna be an uphill battle  
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose  
Ain't about how fast I get there  
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side  
It's the climb...”

Up in the control booth Present Mic was losing his mind. “This is AMAZING! I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS! Somebody please tell me we’re recording this--” He turned on Eraserhead, who had been roped into “co-hosting” with him. “Did you have them all rehearsing in secret??”

Eraserhead looked at him dryly. “I refuse to answer on the grounds that your confusion amuses me.”

“AND WHERE THE HELL IS THAT MUSIC COMING FROM?!?”

The song reached its peak. The rest of the students fell silent as if on cue, leaving the tiny green pony and the gravity girl to sing the final duet as the music swelled to a finish.

“Keep on moving, keep climbing  
Keep the faith baby  
It's all about, it's all about the climb…

“Keep the faith, keep your faith...” Izuku finished the last line alone as the music ended. The students were cheering and whooping and applauding. Some of them even fired their Quirks off into the air. He looked out on the crowds and said the only thing he could think of.

“Plus Ultra.”

The stadium roared its approval.

_The princess’ royal chambers were bedlam. Popcorn and feathers flew as they cheered like teenage fillies._

Izuku jumped down off the stage and galloped to his classmates, who broke ranks and closed around him like he’d already won the gold. Midnight decided to let the disruption of protocol slide. She strutted back onstage and grabbed the mike.

“LET THE GAMES BEGIN!” she shouted.


	6. Chapter 6

An obstacle race. The first event was to be an obstacle race.

On the face of it, this would be right up his alley, Izuku reflected as he trotted along with the other students for the starting gate. A pony in a footrace with humans? No challenge! Right?

Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. It couldn’t; this was U.A., and the staff was used to making obstacles and challenges for people with Quirks arguably weirder than his own. Having hooves wasn’t going to be much of an advantage.

Heck, he wasn’t even the only one this semester, he thought as he brushed past a girl who had horns and cloven hooves of her own.

Bakugo had naturally forced his way up to the front of the group. He was there next to Todoroki. The two boys had been practically bumping chests in the locker room, glaring and throwing down challenges. It was really awkward. Izuku himself meekly took a place in the back of the pack.

Present Mic was in full feather, nearly blowing the loudspeakers out as he started his commentary. “YEEAH!!! AFTER AN INCREDIBLY ROUSING OPENING CEREMONY, OUR STUDENT HOPEFULS ARE NOW GETTING READY FOR THE FIRST LEG OF THEIR JOURNEY TO GREATNESS-- THE OBSTACLE RACE!! BUT THIS YEAR IT’S GOING TO BE A LITTLE DIFFERENT, ISN’T IT ERASER-BRO?”

“Don’t call me that. And yes; after evaluating this year’s classes, it was decided that the typical obstacle race of past years just wasn’t challenging enough. We’ve upped the challenge level and added some new obstacles.

“OH YEAH WE HAVE! THE RUNNERS BEST BE READY, BECAUSE SOMETHING NEW’S BEEN ADDED TO THE MIX!”

Well, wasn’t that ominous.

“ON YOUR MARKS---”

Everyone began jostling for position.

“GET SET---”

All around, people crouched down, ready to run.

“GO!”

The crowd of students surged forward, into the darkness of the tunnel leading out of the stadium, with a roaring Bakugo in the lead. The mob had barely started through when the flash and roar of explosions began echoing in the tunnel. To Izuku’s surprise the mob that had surged forward began surging back, colliding with and tangling limbs with the ones behind. The explanation came a moment later when Bakugo and Todoroki backed out of the tunnel, firing explosions and blasts of ice at a giant freaking mechanical scorpion. It was built like a two-pointer from the admission exam, but at least three times bigger, Izuku estimated. It was also far more heavily armored than the old villain-bots had been; it was shrugging off Bakugo’s blasts and Todoroki’s ice-bolts easily.  
“AND HERE’S THE FIRST OBSTACLE: THE GATEKEEPER. WE NAMED HIM CERBERUS! GUARDIAN OF THE UNDERWORLD, WHO KEPT THE UNDEAD IMPRISONED THERE!”

“Somewhere a scholar of Greek mythology is weeping,” Aizawa snarked.

“IF THEY WANT TO WIN THIS RACE-- OR EVEN BE IN IT-- OUR CONTESTANTS ARE GOING TO HAVE TO GET BY HIM!”

A few of the other students began unleashing their Quirks on the scorpion-bot, to little effect. The machine practically disappeared in clouds of smoke and dust and fire, but it kept coming. It swept its claws back and forth, knocking dozens of students aside. The beam from its tail lashed out again and again, stunning students senseless. Some of the runners took advantage of the fracas and ran around ‘Cerberus,’ diving into the tunnel. Most hung back, indecisive.

To Izuku’s astonishment, Mineta of all students ran forward and began flinging hairballs at the mechanical monster’s recessed head, an expression of utter terror on his face. For a miracle he succeeded! One of the scorpion-bot’s camera-eyes was obstructed. The Gatekeeper reared back, swiping broadly at its head to dry and dislodge whatever was obstructing its vision and keeping it from turning its head. Mineta stumbled back and fell on his butt practically under its nose. The machine was coming perilously close to trampling the boy or flattening him with one of its flailing claws.

Then the rest of the students rallied. Lightning, fire, flying horns, streams of glue, gobbets of acid and more pummeled the robot, taking advantage of its blind spot. Izuku contributed to the volley, firing bolts of green energy from his horn at the thing.

A final massive explosion from Bakugo and the machine finally toppled. The watching crowds cheered, and the students began racing past the smoking remains of the machine. Izuku began galloping after them, fighting the panic that he might fall behind--! Then he saw Mineta. The grape-haired boy had gotten to his feet… but he was obviously limping. The rest of the students parted around him and ran on as if he wasn’t even there. He was gamely trying to follow... 

“Oh…. DANGIT,” Izuku said. He ran up behind the limping boy, dipped his head, stuck his horn between Mineta’s knees and flipped the startled boy up onto his back. 

“WAUGH! What-- hey, watch it with that thing!” he squeaked, referring to Izuku’s horn. “You could poke someone’s eye out!”

“Oh hush!” Izuku said. “Now tuck your knees up high and hold on-- we got some distance to make up!” A confused Mineta did as told, bringing his knees up till they were almost to his chest. He needed to; even as short as he was, sitting on Izuku’s back his feet dragged the ground. He dug his fingers into the green mane in front of him. “Okay, now hold on!” Izuku ordered. “YEEEHAA!” He reared up, nearly giving his rider a heart attack, and began galloping after the other runners.

“Wah-- why are you helping me??” Mineta said as they passed through the archway.

“I saw what you did with the scorpion-- I owe you THIS much,” Izuku said. “Don’t let it go to your head!” That said, he put his head down and went hell-for-leather.

They burst out of the other end of the archway, dust rising under Izuku’s thundering hooves. He estimated they were in the middle of the pack… Then he noticed they were in the middle of something else: an open field FULL of one and two-pointers. Students began breaking off, some running in panic, others squaring off with the robots. “Aw crap--”

“AND DID WE MENTION THAT CERBERUS HAS FRIENDS? GOOD LUCK AGAINST THE OTHER ROBOTS, KIDS-- WE DON’T THINK THEY HOLD A GRUDGE FROM THE ADMISSIONS EXAM, BUT WE CAN’T BE SURE! HAHA!”

“Not funny, Mic-sensei, not funny,” Izuku said, trying to gallop faster.

“I got this!” Mineta sat up and began flinging hairballs in every direction. Izuku never realized what scary good aim the little purple pervert had. One and two pointers that were closing in jerked to a halt as their wheels were gummed up with gluey balls of hair or their cameras were put out of commission. One memorable one got its weapons port jammed and blew itself up when it tried to open fire anyway. Pieces of robot rained down.

“I can’t believe that’s working!” Izuku shouted over his shoulder.

“How do you think I passed the practical in the entrance exam?” Mineta retorted. There was a resounding THWACK as he nailed another robot square in the face. 

“Outta the way, runt!” someone shouted. A kid with lightning bolts shaved in his hair-- a speedster of some sort-- was closing in from behind. He went to kick the duo to the side with a sweep of his foot.

SPLAT. The next moment his foot was stuck solidly to the ground. He faceplanted violently and disappeared in the distance rapidly, swearing loudly. “Oops,” Mineta said.

“That wasn’t very sportsmanlike,” Izuku complained. 

“And kicking a midget and his pony was?” Mineta countered. “Oh crap--” he pointed ahead and the argument was dropped. A literal WALL of Zero Pointers was blocking the way. Once again the students were bunching up as those with more pluck-- or less sense-- attacked the robots, trying to clear a way. 

Then suddenly, two of the robots were encased in ice. Izuku could see Bakugo and Todoroki racing past, one blasting through the air, one skating along the ground. The students surged forward, trying to take advantage of the momentary gap.

“No, that’s no good--” Izuku shouted, even as the robots began to fall. Students ran for their lives. With a roar and a crash they came tumbling down, blocking the path again. The other robots pressed in, closing the gap.

“Now what?” Mineta said.

“Now this!” Izuku replied, and began running straight at the Zero Pointers. Just as Mineta began screaming in panic, just as they were practically at the toes of the robot titans, Izuku’s horn flared. There was a flash and the entire universe turned inside out like a donut---

And with a pop they reappeared on the other side, well behind the Zero Pointer scrimmage line and a hundred more meters down the path. “Holy cow, what… did we just teleport?”

“Yeah,” Izuku panted, his horn steaming slightly. “And don’t ask me to do it again. I can’t manage it twice in a row yet to save my life!”

“No worries,” Mineta gulped. “I think I saw the back of my own brain…. What, what’s wrong?”  
Izuku had staggered to a halt. Up ahead was the next obstacle; an enormous rocky wall, hundreds of feet high. Mineta threw his arms wide in disbelief. “Where did they get a freaking MOUNTAIN??”

“AND NOW… THE CLIFFS OF INSANITY!! CAN YOU GET PAST CEMENTOSS’ CUSTOM MADE CLIMBING WALL?”

Izuku and Mineta looked closer. They could see the frontrunners already starting to scale the wall. Yaoyorozu had made herself some rope and pitons and other climbing gear and was making her way methodically upwards. Izuku fleetingly wondered; was cliff-climbing a hobby rich people got into? Ochako had apparently made herself weightless and was scurrying up the wall like a fly. Judging by the melting ice-ramp, Todoroki had already gotten past. Others were using their powers in various ways to climb, rappel, line-swing, or otherwise scale the obstacle. For some reason Bakugo was lying at the bottom of the wall on his back in a puddle of water?

As they watched, a Support Class student reached the bottom of the wall and began limbering up some sort of jetpack. He’d not even risen ten feet off the ground when a jet of water from above hit him square on, dousing him and dropping him back into the mud. For the first time Izuku noticed the robotic turrets mounted at the top of the wall.

“OOOH, DID WE FORGET TO MENTION? NO FLYING ALLOWED! YOU ALL HAVE TO ACTUALLY FACE THIS OBSTACLE STRAIGHT ON, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, TRUE LISTENERS! NO EASY OUTS!”

“So much for going pegasus,” Mineta said dolefully. He noticed then that Izuku was glowing. He yipped, jumping off his erstwhile steed. “What are you doing?”

“This shape is tapped out,” Izuku said through gritted teeth. “I’m not strong enough in this form to keep going like this-- gotta change things up--!”

With a brilliant flash of rainbow light, he transformed. He stood in front of Mineta now in his Earth Pony form. Mineta looked skeptical. “Are you sure this is the form you need?”

Izuku nodded and pranced in place, refreshed. “This form, I’ve got muscle and energy for days!” He ran up to an open section of the wall and jumped up, perching impossibly on an outcropping no bigger than Mineta’s hand. “Plus, it turns out I’m as nimble as a mountain goat!” He started to ascend, then hesitated. “But… I can’t carry you climbing like this--”

Mineta smirked and plucked off two hairballs, holding one up in each hand. “Pony, puh-leez.”

Moments later the two were ascending, Izuku clip-clopping from stone to stone like a gazelle, Mineta steadily heading upward on a ‘ladder’ of hairballs. “You better be careful, some fast climber is going to come up those stickyballs behind you,” Izuku warned.  
“Good luck to ‘em,” Mineta said, tacking another hairball in place. “I can keep ‘em from sticking to me, but anyone else touches ‘em they’re gonna be stuck to this wall.”

Far below a frustrated yell of “daammiiiit” wafted up. “I hate that friggin’ grape kid!”

“Ah, my adoring public,” Mineta said with a smile.

Izuku laughed. “You’re really inventive with those things,” he said in honest admiration.

“Well when all you’ve got is a hammer...” Mineta said. 

“You’re a pretty good climber, too.”

“Got a lot of practice,” Mineta said, climbing a few more steps. “There’s a bathhouse near where I live with a high wooden fence around it.” He gave Izuku a leer.

“Mineta…!” Izuku said in a disappointed tone. 

“I am what I am,” Mineta said with a shrug.

“Yeah, but--” Izuku paused to clamber up to another inch-wide hoof-hold. “But don’t you ever want to be better?” That seemed to give the grape boy pause. Neither of them said anything more till they reached the top of the wall.

For a wonder, they were among the first to the top. They reached the top and saw that on the other side was…. A slope. A rather steep and snow covered one. Izuku saw snow machines blowing down either side. “Guess they didn’t want to make it TOO hard to get down,” he said.

“Good thing. My arms are rubber bands,” Mineta complained, rubbing his biceps.

“Last one down is a shnook!” Izuku said. He flopped on his pony belly and began sliding downhill. Mineta followed, but his own slide rapidly turned into a tumble. He reached the bottom in the middle of a small avalanche. Izuku had to dig him out. He managed to extract the other boy just as Bakugo’s profanity-laden shout of triumph echoed from the top. “Time to run...”

They didn’t get far past the next bend. “Well, now we know where they got the half-mountain back there,” Izuku said. “They made it with what they dug out to make the lake.”

“AND THE FIRST CONTESTANTS HAVE REACHED THE FIRST HALF OF THE NEW LAKE,” Present Mic shouted. First half? Izuku wondered. “AND I SAID FIRST HALF BECAUSE THERE ARE TWO, DIVIDED BY THAT LITTLE RISE THERE. THIS LITTLE PUDDLE IS CONNECTED TO ANOTHER--- BY AN UNDERWATER TUNNEL. WHOOAAAA! BETTER HOLD YOUR BREATH!”

“OF COURSE YOU CAN GO THE SHORT WAY ACROSS THE TOP--” Several of the students had hit the water. Some were going straight across, others were diving... “BUT SHORTEST ISN’T ALWAYS FASTEST!” Some of the students had swum, skated, or in one memorable case hovercrafted across to the far shore. Bakugo used his blasts to propel himself through the air over the lake, while Todoroki froze a bridge across it and skated across. They quickly passed everyone yet again. But the instant they hit the shore, the explosions started. UA students went pinwheeling through the air on fountains of dirt. “BECAUSE THE SHORT WAY HAS A MINEFIELD IN THE MIDDLE!”

“I’d like to take a moment and reassure the audience the mines are specially designed to minimize the risk of injury,” Aizawa interrupted. “Because nobody thought to add that little fact to their speech...”

Izuku and Mineta looked at each other. “Well, here we go….”

Moments later Mineta and Izuku were paddling their way through the depths. Mineta had one of Izuku’s air bubbles around his head and was paddling along as manfully as he could in the wake of a small green Seapony. Several other students were bravely trying the underwater route as well, with some limited success. Izuku had taken pity on them and was swimming around, putting air bubbles around the heads of those who didn’t have rebreathers, gills or other adaptations of their own.

They reached the bottom of the lake, and yes, there it was, an enormous underwater tunnel. The opening was fairly large, but it was black as pitch inside. Izuku felt Mineta hesitate beside him in fear. He could hear the boy gasping as his heart accelerated. “Don’t worry, Mineta,” Izuku said. “I have sonar. Just hold my elbow, I’ll lead you through.” Mineta nodded jerkily, his airbubble bobbling, and put his hand on Izuku’s forelimb. The two powered on ahead. 

The tunnel was dark, and had a couple of bends, but it was mercifully short. They broke surface on the other side, whooping and sucking in the fresh air as they flopped ashore. “Can you manage another change so soon?” Mineta asked worriedly.

Izuku shook water out of his mane wearily. “I’ll have to,” he said. “Go to the top of the dune and see what’s next.”

Mineta climbed up the sloped beach and looked over the top. He literally went rigid and toppled back down to the bottom. “The staff at this school are INSAAAANE!” he shrieked.

“What--” Izuku started. He had no time to finish his question; Mineta grabbed him around the middle and half-dragged, half carried him to the top. Izuku looked. In the distance he could see the final archway back into the stadium. In between it and them, wandering back and forth, were a dozen or so…

“TORNADOES?” Izuku yelped. 

“THE FINAL OBSTACLE IS COURTESY THE HURRICANE HEROES, TYPHOON AND WHIRLWIND,” Present Mic shouted. “ALL YOU FLYERS CAN TRY TO GET THROUGH THAT TUMBLE DRYER AIRBORNE-- BUT I WOULDN’T RECOMMEND IT!”

“Challenge accepted,” Izuku grunted. He began to glow with One-for-All.

Mineta’s response was a flat “What.”

“Only form that will do,” Izuku said. The glow brightened, but slowly; so many changes in such a short time--!

“You’re nuts. They’re nuts. We’re ALL nuts,” Mineta said.   
“This one doesn’t just fly, Mineta,” Izuku said as the light engulfed him. “Trust me!”

“I do not BELIEEEEEEEEEVE THIIIIIIS” Mineta wailed as he was tossed on the back of a green pegasus and hauled into the sky towards what looked like, to him, certain death by spin cycle.

Izuku laughed out loud as he hit the leading edge of the whirlwind-storm. Pegasi didn’t just fly; they were wind masters, weather manipulators. They could sense the air currents in their bones, feel the change in the weather in their plumage. Izuku flung himself into the swirling winds. Updrafts and downdrafts, air pockets and weaving funnel clouds… the air danced, and he danced with it.

Mineta was having less of a grand time. Izuku could hear his yodels of terror even over the roar of the winds. Then there was another sound… a chain of all-to-familiar explosions. Izuku looked over his shoulder; it seemed Bakugo was back in the race. The fiery-tempered explosion king was rising from the edge of the lake on a column of blasts, rocketing after them--

Izuku looked around. With a start he realized they were in the lead! There were a handful of students on the ground, trying to dodge or brute force their way through the tornado alley. Scanning the crowd he spotted a red-and-white mop of hair making its way through the pack. Ice spread across the ground ahead of him in a shockingly fast wave, frosting the ground. As it passed many of the funnel clouds began to falter and come apart. He’s cutting off the warm air that feeds them, Izuku marveled. Clever.

Bakugo was taking a more direct approach, naturally. Any of the miniature funnel clouds that weaved toward him as he ruthlessly pounded his way through the air got hit with an extra large blast, shattering it and sending the split funnel wobbling off in two directions. Brute and blunt or not, it was working; he was gaining fast.

As they closed in on the finish line, Izuku could see Typhoon and Whirlwind standing atop the stadium wall. The mini-tornadoes were densest there, weaving back and forth across the entrance in a dizzying pattern. We’ll never get through that, Izuku decided.

But something else could… “Hang on Mineta,” he shouted. He flew straight at one of the nearest funnel clouds, eliciting a shriek from his passenger. Then he swerved and flew straight up its flank. Up, higher and higher, wings straining-- till they burst through the cloud cover. He hung there in the sun for a brief moment, then dove down the mouth of the funnel.

They were diving down a swirling vortex, a tunnel of howling wind. Izuku strained, reaching out with his power through his wings, willing the winds to change… Slowly, the tunnel curved, till it was running parallel to the ground. The now-horizontal funnel cloud bored through the whirlwinds yet in the way, pushing them aside--

Turning into a clear path through the storm.

Izuku whooped again and flew down the whirlwind tunnel to the finish line.

Something burst through the funnel wall behind them. Alarmed, Izuku and Mineta looked back; it was a familiar ball of smoke and fire and explosions and badly-directed rage. “DEKUUUU!” Bakugo screamed. He thundered down the throat of the vortex till he was neck and neck with the frightened pegasus. “I’m gonna MURDER you! No way do you beat me, you pathetic fourlegged little cowardly CHEAT--”  
Mineta decided he’d heard enough. “Hey BAKA!” 

“WHAT DID YOU CALL M--”

SPLAT.

The mass of hairballs hit Bakugo square in the mouth. On pure reflex he grabbed for his face with both hands, properly losing control of his already unstable flight. He fell behind, tumbling end over end, and fell into the wall of the funnel. The last they saw of him he was getting a hands on lesson on what it was like to be a sock in a tumble dryer.

Izuku and Mineta laughed so hard that Izuku nearly lost flight control. He righted himself just in time and began flapping for all he was worth, racing down the cloud funnel. They were through the archway… Izuku could see the light at the other end through the swirling winds… there was the stadium--

Izuku and Mineta burst out of the archway and glided across the finish line.

The audience in the stands cheered till the lights shook. The next one through was Todoroki, still skating on a sheet of ice. Behind him came the mass of students; among them was Bakugo, who was stumbling along with his hands in front of him, the mass of hairballs still stuck to his face. He could breathe at least, to judge by the muffled profanity. He managed to fumble his way across the finish line.

Nobody was bothering to help him. 

“We did it! We did it!” Mineta cheered. He flopped on track next to Izuku and threw his arms around the pony’s neck. “Oh, thank you so much man--”

Izuku looked at Mineta and chuckled. The boy had apparently yanked off all his hairballs at once for that last stunt and they hadn’t grown back yet. “The crewcut style looks good on you,” he joked.

“Hah hah.” Mineta looked up at the Jumbotron. It was in scoreboard mode. For some reason the first and second place names hadn’t displayed yet. He saw Midnight and the other judges talking to one another “Uh oh. Trouble?”

Midnight strode up to the microphone. “In a split decision, it has been decided that, due to their cooperation, rather than first and second place the first place in the Obstacle Course will be shared between Midoriya Izuku and Mineta Minoru!”

“All Right!” Mineta cheered. Izuku felt like cheering too as his name went up on the screen next to Mineta’s. After that the names went up in rapid succession…

With scores next to them?

“And due to their tie in first place, Midoriya and Mineta will have the ONE MILLION POINTS for first place split between them!” A small workbot rolled out to where they sat and handed them each a headband. Printed on each was 500,000 POINTS.

Mineta and Izuku stared at their respective headbands, then at each other. “Should I be worried?” Mineta finally asked.


End file.
